Recourse for Intel i820 + MTH Users

[Athlon4all]

Exactly, which is why open standards are such a good idea, which is yet another reason why RDRAM is such a bad idea.

Again, please seperate RDRAM from Rambus the company. You are saying there that the technology RDRAM is bad ideas, when it is not.

Why? When making as decision, I think it is best to focus on all the consequences of that decision, including the effect on the company that made the product. If that company is acting in a way that you feel is detrimental to you or some interest you care about, you can not buy their products.

I guess thats the thing, Rambus' (or any companies') actions have very little consequence aside from the product itself and the price.

It may have been easier for you to get what you wanted from your vendor instead of going to Intel. The reason why Intel rejected your suggested solution is that they have implemented a particular exchange policy for that issue. To deviate from that policy involves a great deal of paper work.

I can definately believe that and I think you can too MTHuser/BDSM

 

[BDSM]

Hello Andy!

As Mthuser already pointed out, I did not speculate in the performance of RDRAM. Actually nitromethane is much more powerful than regular gas!

But nitromethane wouldn't work in a regular car would it? And RDRAM was very expensive back then and at the time not very popular because everyone knew that i440BX + regular SDRAM outperformed the RDRAM based mobo's.

So at that time you would hardly be able to sell mobo + rdram and get yourself a new i815 board and sdram unless you were very lucky.
Selling this stuff may also involve costs for shipping and the risk of not getting payed. You forgot that. You are also assuming that ppl want to bother putting in an ad (and pehaps paying for that as well) and spending time answering emails, phonecalls etc.
I think most ppl don't. And if you have your own company and you have bought perhaps tens or hundreds of these troubled 820 mobos you are NOT gonna get rid of them from an ad in the local paper without hurting economically I promise you that.

Tates.. No analogies? We aren't alowed to compare? I don't agree. But alright. I'll give you another one that doesn't involve cars.

Whatif you bought a new computer and you found out the onboard ide controller on the mobo didn't work properly.
And the manufacturer advices you touse the on board scsi controller instead and slips u a SCSI drive for compensation. Both perform on par with the original IDE setup. U think great!!.. scsi is great.. but.. dang the drives are expensive compared to IDE. To make the analogy fit better there would be no free pci slots so u wouldn't be able to get a new ide controller (you couldn't get around the mth bug either).

Now you are stuck with a computer that does not do what's advertised and adding harddrive space will cost you about triple what IDE would (RDRAM was also much more expensive at that time).. maybe you had just gotten your first dsl line then like many of us did and you desperately needed a spacious harddrive to store movies and music etc.. or you needed it for some other reason.

The point is that with this "new and improved" setup it could be a whole lot more expensive to DO WHAT YOU INTENDED TO DO IN THE FIRST PLACE than if things had worked as advertised! You would be pissed by now and you'd want a refund and you'd be even more pissed when you didn't get it. Just like alot of ppl were after the mth "incident".

Andy.. No I don't have my own business (I work in a foundry). And personally I couldn't care less about this oooold problem..I never owned an i820 mobo myself.. I had a BX mobo 🙂 But I still think Mthuser is right in what he is saying!

Regarding P4 coupled with RDRAM. If you read again what I said you will see that I really wasn't commenting on the p4 platform in general at all but rather on the performance of RDRAM on the p4 platform.

The dual channel RDRAM based i850 chipset based motherboards have been performance leaders in the past and the i850E is able to snag the performance crown as well coupled with PC1066 RDRAM. However if you read the PX333 review at anandtech you will see that a single channel of PC2700 offers performance extremely close to that of dual channel PC1066. Generally about 94 to 100 % of the speed of i850E with PC1066 which the platform isn't even validated for.

This means that "the immense bandwidth" provided by RDRAM is in fact not as good a solution as we thought. Pc2700 DDR only offers 65% of the bandwidth that dual channel PC1066 RDRAM does and it is still able to compete and sometimes even outperform the rdram based 850E!


Now my point.. Dual channel DDR is getting closer and closer and it will (in my own humble opinion) seriously outperform the RDRAM based solutions. I think the true performance of the P4 will finally be unleashed when it's connected to dual channel DDR.
Intel knows this and it is why it didn't validate PC1066 RDRAM for the 850E and that's why there is no USB 2.0 in the 850E. They have jumped on the DDR bandwagon. And Intel usually get what they want. Besides.. this time they are choosing the right technology.

Now. The last part is what I believe will happen. Noone really knows what will happen. Rambus may or may not pull a rabbit out of their hat. I don't believe they are able to be I don't know that for sure. This is what I think.

I'm sure you will remind me if I forgot to answer one of your questions 🙂

 

[Thor86]

I owned one of those I820 chipsets, and all I did was return it to the vendor and they replaced it with what I wanted at the time. No fuss, no muss. Stop wasting people's tax dollars and pursuing "your" dreams.

 

[mthuser]

It may have been easier for you to get what you wanted from your vendor instead of going to Intel. The reason why Intel rejected your suggested solution is that they have implemented a particular exchange policy for that issue. To deviate from that policy involves a great deal of paper work.

Why would it be easier for the vendor to process my refund than for Intel? Actually it would have been much harder, because I purchased my motherboard and CPU from different vendors, and the problem was not their fault, so they would then each have had to return the products to Intel. Intel's paperwork is not my problem. It's their job to make their internal procedures efficient. "It's too much trouble" is not an excuse for not doing the right thing for their customers.

The analogy to the motherboard with a defective IDE controller is a good one. Nobody would accept the manufacturer saying just use SCSI devices if the IDE controller is broken, and nobody should accept Intel saying just use RDRAM is the SDRAM interface is broken. The need for legal action is regrettable, but Intel needs to take responsibility for its own products and decisions.

 

[AndyHui]

What does returning your processor have to do with it? The processor is not defective.

All you needed to do was return your motherboard to the vendor. The vendor should always be the first point of call for any returns, repairs or inquiries.

Why would it be easier? Because the vendor would return the board to the supplier. The supplier would then be able to aggregate the returns and make the whole process a lot easier, and might have been able to get you the 815E board that you wanted. The manufacturers generally do not deal with end users, it is the vendor's job to do so. Had you have bought the board directly from Intel, you might have more justification. But you did not. By failing to go back to your place of purchase, you have wasted the profit margin that you paid to them. You have not given them a chance to earn that premium over which they charged on their purchase price.

Did you try to go back to the vendor

Have you ever worked in a large company? It is EXTREMELY difficult to make a single exception out of thousands. I am not making excuses for Intel here, but doing such a thing would probably have taken much more time.

 

[mthuser]

What does returning your processor have to do with it? The processor is not defective.

After 29 messages in this thread, is this not clear? I purchased two products from Intel, according to Intel they were supposed to work together, neither one is useful without the other, and I would not have purchased either one alone. It turns out one of them is defective, and Intel has refused to replace it with a comparable product, because there is no comparable product (a slot 1 motherboard using SDRAM) and they don't want to make one. So, one of two things must be done, either the memory must be replaced or the processor must be replaced. This should be at Intel's expense and at the customer's option, not Intel's option, however Intel has decided that all customers wanting a replacement will need to accept the first option and use RDRAM.

Isn't that strange? Providing RDRAM is at least several times more expensive for Intel than providing new processors, but Intel has decided to only provide the more expensive option. Apparently, Intel believes it is worth several hundred dollars to them for a user to adopt RDRAM instead of SDRAM, maybe due to incentives provided by Rambus. However, the cost to the user will be several hundred dollars more in memory upgrade costs over the lifetime of the board. So, in offering to exchange CC820 boards for VC820 boards, Intel is really offering to take several hundred dollars out of the user's pocket (in the form on increased memory costs) and put it into their pocket (in the form of incentives from Rambus). How nice.

What about the second option? Have Intel provide i815 motherboards and free processors, which they make themselves? For SDRAM users that would involve no additional costs, and it would be cheaper for Intel. However, Intel has adamantly refused to provide that option, apparently unwilling to pass up the chance to force RDRAM down users' throats. They are holding the replacements or refunds that users are owed hostage as leverage to get users to migrate to RDRAM! I, for one, am unwilling to accept that kind of treatment. I am the customer, I paid the money, I didn't cause the defect, Intel caused the defect, and they now need to do what's right for their customers instead of trying to pressure customers into accepting products they don't want.

Your point about it being too much paperwork for Intel to do this is ridiculous. Intel has already offered a refund for the CC820 board alone, there is no reason to go to the vendor for that. Intel also offered me a 440BX based board, which was the same board I was trying to replace when I bought the CC820, and it would be no more paperwork for them to offer me that than it would be to offer me what they should have offered me. In any case, Intel's paperwork is not the customers' problem, any more than Intel's foolish business decisions or engineering mistakes should be.

 

[Tates]

After 29 messages in this thread, is this not clear?

Congratulations, you may already be a whiner 😛

 

[AndyHui]

You did not purchase 2 products from Intel. You purchased two products manufactured by Intel.

 

[Booster]

mthuser, I second that it's not a bright idea to try to sue Intel. IMO, every action Intel takes as a company is backed up by very strong lawyer support. Just look what big a trouble their lawyers are for VIA. And notice disclaimer at their site stating that their products might contain errata and not function properly.

Just a thought... If this kind of class action suit was possible, I bet VIA would have already been sued a dozen times for their core logic products not functioning properly as advertised.

 

[mthuser]

You purchased two products manufactured by Intel.

And for which Intel is therefore responsible. So far you have cycled through ten different spurious arguments for why responsibility belongs to anyone other than Intel. Why is that I wonder? As for whether it's feasible to hold them to that responsibility through legal action, since nothing else has worked, it's at least plausible enough that two law firms are looking into it. It will be up to them whether they want to file a suit.

 

[Booster]

it's at least plausible enough that two law firms are looking into it. It will be up to them whether they want to file a suit.

Hmmm... Sorry, don't you think it's a little too late for that? Nobody sued Intel when it was the right time, and only now, 2 years after or so, they want to do it. ???????? Well, it's a very good strategy at least. 2 years after, replacement parts aren't going to be SDRAM and Socket 370 CPUs since they're out of production, but much better looking DDR and P4 CPUs 😉. No offense meant, BTW 😉.

And could you pls answer one my question, mthuser? Why don't these law firms want to try to sue VIA? They could sure win the case since VIA has been making problem creating (to be politically correct 😀) core logic for years, involving the loss of time, data (686B southbridge) and sometimes maybe even money. They could, for example, base their claims on the sad fact that by far not always all the advertised features work. I remember the article I read at AT about VIA's newest P4X333 chipset claiming AGP8X support, while the board 'wouldn't even post with an AGP8X card installed'. Thus, you buy advertised AGP8X and get AGP4X only. A perfect base for a lawsuit, IMO. Ah, forget what I just said. 😀 I hope noone will ever sue VIA, b/c believe it or not, their chipsets are fun. I ROFLMAOed quite a bit when I read that, it's so typical. 😀

 

[mthuser]

Nobody sued Intel when it was the right time, and only now, 2 years after or so, they want to do it.

The reason it took so long was that I didn't know how to find a qualified lawyer and I wasn't that interested in filing law suits in the first place. I was hoping that Intel would change its policy on its own, but unfortunately, that didn't happen. Fortunately, it turns out to be much easier to find things now thanks to Google. I just typed in a few search terms and got back half a dozen class action firms. I sent them emails and two responded. What they want to do now is up to them, but it's looking increasingly likely that it will go forward.

Why don't these law firms want to try to sue VIA?

Maybe they do. I don't own any VIA products, but if they made defective products, they should take responsibility. In my opinion though, what Intel did was worse than just claiming that a defect wasn't bad enough to warrant replacement of the product. They acknowledged that the defect that was bad enough to warrant replacement, and then they structured the replacement options to make sure that they profited again from the replacement at their own customers' expense! Not to mention that they were also helping a third company gain a monopoly on the entire memory industry. In my opinion, if any conduct justifies a class action it's this kind of conduct.

 

[Tates]

This forum should entertain technical issues relating to motherboards, not the rants of the pissed off.

At this point, it is painfully obvious that the only ones who will entertain your quest to take down The Man are the two law firms who responded to you.

Exhaust your energy their way. I think I speak for the collective when I say, we simply don't care.

Enough already.:disgust:

 

[mthuser]

This forum should entertain technical issues relating to motherboards
I think I speak for the collective when I say, we simply don't care.

This forum is for all issues related to motherboards, including market issues. I wasn't aware that it was a collective spoken for by you. If you don't care, why are you reading this thread? I believe there is another board for purely technical issues. Maybe you would be happier reading that board.

 

[Tates]

This forum is for all issues related to motherboards, including market issues. I wasn't aware that it was a collective spoken for by you. If you don't care, why are you reading this thread? I believe there is another board for purely technical issues. Maybe you would be happier reading that board.

You've been here all of 14 days and all of your posts are contained in this thread. What would you know about this forum and what it is intended for?!?

You've made your point. You're pissed at Intel. Deal with it and move on.