Acer still using Cougar Point B2 stepping?

[steve876]

I recently bought an Acer Aspire 5750 laptop at the beginning of December.

When I run CPU-Z it reports the Southbridge as being Intel HM65 rev B2. I've also dug around in device manager and get REV_04 in the SATA controller ID, implying that it's using the faulty revision of the chipset. I've read elsewhere that some manufacturers have forced B3 revision motherboards to report themselves as B2 for driver compatibility issues and that utilities like CPU-Z may not be totally reliable if this is the case.

Since the machine only has 2 SATA devices (HDD and ODD) and these are connected to the SATA3 ports 0 and 1, there shouldn't be a problem, but is it possible that Acer is still supplying machines with a faulty chipset 10 months after the B3 remedy was issued?

 

[GhislainG]

Very unlikely from a company like Acer. What does the Intel Chipset Identification utility display? http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Intel-Chipset-Identification-Utility.shtml

 

[steve876]

That file doesn't appear to work with win7 64-bit. Asks you to run it as an administrator, even though you're in an admin account, and you check 'run this program as an administrator' in its compatibility properties. Googling the problem shows others have had the same issue

 

[GhislainG]

You are correct. I just checked Intel's site and it says "No 64-bit OS support". I would contact Acer and return the laptop if their answer isn't satifactory. On the other hand, you already know that ports 0 and 1 are not affected by the bug.