Intel caused a huge chaos after announcing a bug in its latest 6-Series motherboard chipsets, which literally hammered the Sandy Bridge market. However, it now announced that the reshipping of the faulty chipsets have continued after a lengthy discussions with computer manufacturers.

‘As a result of these discussions and specific requests from computer makers,’ says the company, ‘Intel is resuming shipments of the Intel 6-series chipset for use only in PC system configurations that are not impacted by the design issue.’

The company also emphasizes that ‘only computer makers who have committed to shipping the Intel 6-series chipset in PC system configurations that are not impacted by the design issue will be receiving these shipments.’

Now, what does this mean? Well, your complete Sandy Bridge system bought from companies like Dell or HP or even MSI’s All-in-One PC will not be postponed, but they’ll probably ship with a separate SATA controller, or that they will only use the two unaffected 6Gbps SATA ports. However, your system might have limited future expansion as there are only two functional SATA ports integrated.

Sandy Bridge notebooks might not be affected after all, as they are only ever likely to use two SATA ports in their lifetime, great news for those waiting for new Sandy Bridge boards. It’s probably a good move for Intel to clear away those faulty chipsets in good measures, and still get some bucks back, though we can only imagine that Intel is applying a hefty discount to get the chips shipped out.

In the meantime, Intel also says it’s now started manufacturing new versions of the chipsets with silicon fix to solve the 3Gbps SATA problems, and that these will start shipping in mid-February. However, consumers aren’t likely to see revised boards for a good while yet, as it will take a number of weeks for board partners to install the new chips, and then ship the updated boards over from Asia. Intel currently estimates that full production of boards based on Intel’s 6-series chipsets won’t be in full swing in April.