hey, I did a quick search on the forum to see if this had already been posted...but couldnt find anything, sorry if i missed it... http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-6-Core-Xe...38QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCPUs?hash=item414bc170b2 apparently its legit too, are they out officially or is this a leak? Nick
Look at the auction title. ES = Engineering Sample. It says it all on the chip - "Intel Confidential". So legit, yes. Legal? No. You're not allowed to sell engineering samples. Oh, and despite all the rumours they're not going to be called i9's, they're i7 EE's
Itll be an i7 x980 and itll be clocked at 3.33ghz. Thats a 2.4ghz ES and as such is not worth the money. The chips will be released with pricing to replace the current 975 according to intel listings. Andy
Hi i found this a while ago can't belive the same guy is still selling these he had 5 of them when i posted this. http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=179542
They may not work on any current motherboards, at least not up to potential. They probably need microcode for the CPU that has not been released yet.
Intel are not releasing a dedicated platform for Gulftown, almost all current X58 mobos will support Intel's new Hex-core CPU's, albeit with a BIOS flash. I have the P6T Deluxe V2 and ASUS have already released their latest BIOS revision to add support for these CPUs.
Not as exciting when there's a six core i7 nextdoor... Also selling an ES.. Yeah that sounds like a good idea.
Microcode is a software patch for a CPU. Each patch is typically matched to one particular stepping of the CPU as identified from the CPUID. If there is not a microcode for a CPU, a number of bad things can happen from various processor features not working (P4s needed it for hyperthreading for example) to the system not finishing POST. Microcode is included in the BIOS image and it is the BIOS that loads it into the CPU. There are multiple microcode patched in your BIOS, they vary between CPU models and steppings. Since the CPU is not released yet, it is possible Intel could roll out one more stepping and not release the microcode patch for the ES CPUs making those processors non functional or at least hamstrung. I saw this happen inadvertently in a lab environment. The lab was using a lot of ES CPUs then updated their boards with a production BIOS. The problem is that the ES CPUs were never meant to be released and their microcode was not int he new BIOS. Boards either would not boot, or had a lot of things that did not work. So even with a BIOS update, these chips could still be an expensive gamble.
I understand your point, however, I think it's irrelevant in this case. A Quick bit of googling will bring up a myriad of benchmarks from people who have got their hands on Gulftown Engineering Samples and tested / overclocked the pants of them, with some fantastic results. Especially in multi-threaded benching tests. This would indicate to me, that the Microcode for these particular chips is indeed present, or surely we wouldn't be seeing any benchmark at all, would we? Also, there would appear to be benchmarks obtained from Gulftown CPU's coupled with quite a few different motherboard manufacturers. This tells me that the Microcode is readily available. IMO, not a gamble. Motherboard support for these chips seems to be there. If it was not, we simply wouldn't be seeing good benchmark results. The only gamble I see, is that they are extremely overpriced.
The CPU-Z screen shot shows the CPU as A0 silicon. I can't go into any detail as the info I have clearly states that I cannot. But there is probably a good reason this guy could get an A0 away from his employer to put on Ebay. That reason should be enough to keep people from buying that CPU.
splynn is right.. intel did the same thing when they went 45nm- the engineering samples worked on the old nforce boards, then come retail they didn't.. there was a guy on evga who used to test es and he had trouble ocing too- it's the microcode, intel can do whatever they want that's not a good idea to buy these
id imagine A0 silicon is the hardware equivalent of alpha level software, ie quite a few bugs and un-optimised (as you could guess from the fact its clocked so much lower than it will be at retail).
A0 is basically "hey, it ran this time!" and as such is not to be counted on for everyday things. First stepping is still kinda beta, I'll point you to the numerous stepping changes that either fixed OCing (Q6600 B1-G0, 955/965 C2-C3) and of course the infamous TLB errata on my AAA1B Opteron here (fixed in B3 revision.) You pay your dollar, you spin the wheel.
