1156 Engineering Samples ~ they any good at clocking?

[hamunaptra]

There are several i5, i7 engineering samples available on ebay at really low prices.
I am curious, if any of you had first hand experience w/ ES 1156 chips and know how close they are to their retail counterparts?
Are they broken in any way? Do they have the same performance? Do they overclock as well?

Ive seen several review sites using ES 1156 chips when they came out and they seem to maintain nearly as good OC's .. not sure bout performance tho.
Anyways, it would be a great help if you guys could chime in. Thanks

Engineering sample processors are and will always remain Intel's property. If you buy an ES processor you are buying stolen property, and while we're not lawyers, we would strongly suggest you heed our advice and not get involved with stolen goods
-ViRGE

 

[ctsoth]

You've been here long enough to know that engineering samples are illegal to buy and sell, those on sale are stolen property of Intel.

As to your question, I'm sure some are equal to retail, I'm sure many are not.

 

[kowalabearhugs]

I'd ask the seller. If someone possesses a engineering sample but is unable to answer your questions then I'd be very hesitant about procuring said unit from them.

Regarding legality, choo gotta do what choo gotta do, mang

 

[hamunaptra]

Apparently they are dell pulled processors. So, doubt seller would know much about its OC capabilities..

 

[SunnyD]

They are no different than retail. As with any chip, OC YMMV, based on several criteria, many of them having nothing to do with the chip itself. Being an ES chip has very little bearing on the actual overclock capabilities in general.

 

[Maximilian]

Not broken to my knowledge, they should clock just as well as any retail chip.

I see the white knights have already crawled out from the woodwork

 

[sm625]

Apparently they are dell pulled processors.

How can they be "Dell pulled"?

 

[hamunaptra]

How can they be "Dell pulled"?

Not sure, the auction states its Dell PN .. bla bla bla, so, I assumed it was pulled from a Dell system. And by definition of what an ES is on intels website. It is stated they do ship ES's to their OEM's. So, dell could have had more than a few on hand.

OTOH, maybe they just put the wrong company there. Maybe supposed to say Intel PN... lol

 

[Denithor]

One thing to keep in mind - ES chips are often from quite early production runs, intended for OEMs to be able to benchmark heat generation, etc, to properly handle in their systems. As early revisions, they likely do not operate quite as well as final silicon of any given generation. Best comparison is the early (B3) generation of Q6600 versus the later "golden" G0 chips, which ran much cooler/lower power and overclocked considerably better. As the process matures they make better chips.

So the short story is, an ES is unlikely to match normal production chips in power efficiency and/or OC potential.