Xeon E5 v3 Engineering Samples

[2FA]

So I was browsing Ebay for low priced Xeons and noticed that there are a lot of high end v3 Engineering Samples being sold rather cheap. Where do so many come from?

 

An example being this E5-2658 v3 for $240.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-E5-2658-v3-ES-LGA2011-3-12C-Compatible-with-X99-i7-5820K-5930K-5960X/141952992139?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D36017%26meid%3Dab4c0645a7934f5fb7f36a30f6319c12%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D141938500198

[Bananasplit_00]

anyone know off a nice one to stick in my computer instead of my 4690K? just wondering if there is something cheap and better  

[2FA]

2 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

anyone know off a nice one to stick in my computer instead of my 4690K? just wondering if there is something cheap and better  

E3 1230 or 1231 v3 if you want to keep the same motherboard. Basically an i7 but no iGPU and costs the same as an i5.

[Mark77]

ES CPU's go out to a wide variety of Intel customers.  The commercial terms of such are not publicly disclosed, but its generally believed that the contracts impose a condition upon those who receive ES CPU's under such contracts to return and/or destroy them once they have finished using them for internal engineering purposes. 

 

Whether ownership is actually vested with Intel, and such CPU's are leased to the customers, or whether the customer actually owns them is a matter of debate.  However the general consensus is that they are being obtained and sold to the public under conditions that involve, at the very least, breach of contract with Intel.  Thus, most venues and forums have prohibited the resale, or significant discussion on ES CPU's. 

 

In some cases, they very well could be early pre-release steppings that do legitimately have problems that were caught and fixed later in the development cycle.

[Bananasplit_00]

1 minute ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

E3 1230 or 1231 v3 if you want to keep the same motherboard. Basically an i7 but no iGPU and costs the same as an i5.

awesome, il look into it

[thekeemo]

The engineering samples

1. Are not supposed to be sold

2. Have been battered to shit

3. Are pre production meaning minor things may have changed

[Yahfz]

As a owner of a ES CPU heres a few stuff you should know to complement what thekeemo said:

1. Even tho your motherboard has a compatible socket, the ES CPU may not work.

2. You should ALWAYS pay attention to what revision is the cpu, so make sure you should ask the seller whats revision is the cpu and what motherboard he was using before you buy it.

3. I tested some 3960x ES editions and some of them had something weird with the PCI-E not working.

[arnavvr]

4 minutes ago, Yahfz said:

As a owner of a ES processor heres a few stuff you should know to complement what thekeemo said:

1. Even tho your motherboard has a compatible socket, the ES processor may not work.

2. You should ALWAYS pay attention to what revision is the cpu, so make you should ask the seller what revision is the cpu and what motherboard he was using before you buy it.

3. I tested some 3960x ES editions and some of them had something weird with the PCI-E not working.

To further your point, 3960X ESes were at 2.3Ghz, not the usual 3.33Ghz on 3960X retail samples.

[Yahfz]

Yes, that is true. I had no problem overclocking it to 4ghz tho.

[DunePilot]

Nothing wrong with most ES some are basically brand new and some even have extra cores unlocked in the microcode.... that usually only happens on the 4/8 cores being 6/12.

For a hefty discount I'd have no issue at all picking up an ES chip. I don't agree with the whole "battered to crap" idea.

[arnavvr]

7 minutes ago, DunePilot said:

Nothing wrong with most ES some are basically brand new and some even have extra cores unlocked in the microcode.... that usually only happens on the 4/8 cores being 6/12.

For a hefty discount I'd have no issue at all picking up an ES chip. I don't agree with the whole "battered to crap" idea.

Didnt you pick up a 5820K tho? I would much prefer this Xeon.

[DunePilot]

4 minutes ago, arnavvr said:

Didnt you pick up a 5820K tho? I would much prefer this Xeon.

I think for most people a 5820k or the new 6800k would be more practical. OC it 4.3 maybe even higher and you have something that will be much faster. Now if you are encoding or rendering and you're using this solely as a workstation or you want to turn it into a private warcraft server or something then yeah this cheap 12 core would be great for that. Who knows, being an ES it might even have some of the multis unlocked. You never quite know what you are going to get with those. A guy on OCN awhile back got a batch of 4 core Xeons which turned out to be 6 cores (Westmere Xeons). 2.2 clockspeed is slow though... and 6 cores 12 threads is overkill for most people and you'll be able to run a 5820k at least 70% faster clock for clock.