Sources at motherboard makers told DigiTimes that Intel has agreed to pay the full cost of related production and shipping of defective motherboards as compensation for the SATA problem on its 6 series chipsets reported DVHardware.

The site heard that Intel will start shipping fixed B3 steppings of its 6 series chipsets to ASUS and Gigabyte next week, but these shipments will be quite small volumes. Regular supply of the Sandy Bridge chipsets isn't expected to return to normal until April.

However, because the related calculation and evaluation processes are complicated, Intel has not yet decided when it will recognize the related losses into its financial report.

The sources pointed out that the issue will seriously damage consumer demand for PCs in the first quarter, causing sales to be lower than expected.

Taiwan-based motherboard players including Asustek Computer, Gigabyte Technology, Elitegroup Computer System (ECS), Micro-Star International (MSI) and ASRock as well as notebook players including Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba have all announced recalls for defective devices.