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"Intel Confidential" CPU purchased

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Engineering samples can be good or bad. We plan for 3 rounds of silicon, proto, EVT and DVT. Proto are the early ones, only a few hundred parts. Probably highly unlikely that you would come across one of those.

EVTs are usually in the low thousands, but typically only go to the largest OEM customers.

DVTs are a larger number of thousands, and these are supposed to be final silicon. Generally these are final silicon and usually there are no changes to final. If there is a change it is only one layer.

If you have a DVT part, then you are most likely OK, but there could be a functional problem that you only find out months from now. If you have an EVT or a proto, then there is a high probability that it has an issue. And overclocking will generally make those issues more probable.

Buyer beware.
 
" . . . woodies."

???

In my mind I see and old 1940's Ford station wagon with surfboards on it.
 
You could try contacting Intel and letting them know that you have an ES chip. I've seen people on other forums get pretty nice rewards for sending back engineering samples. One guy on THF a few years ago bought an ES, called Intel, sent it back, and got a top-of-the-line Core 2 Extreme.

Just a thought.
 
chedrz said:
You could try contacting Intel and letting them know that you have an ES chip. I've seen people on other forums get pretty nice rewards for sending back engineering samples. One guy on THF a few years ago bought an ES, called Intel, sent it back, and got a top-of-the-line Core 2 Extreme.

Just a thought.
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Do I just e-mail the customer support saying I believe I purchased an engineering sample?

Btw did you get your avatar from illidrama?
 
Danyune said:
Do I just e-mail the customer support saying I believe I purchased an engineering sample?

Btw did you get your avatar from illidrama?
Click to expand...

Yeah, just email customer support or call them if there's a number available. They'll probably either tell you to keep it, send you an identical replacement (only non-ES), or upgrade you. It can't hurt, either way.

And no, I didn't get it from illidrama. I don't even know what that is. I just googled Team America Kim Jong Il back in the day. It's been my avatar on a few different forums.

EDIT: Oh, checked the other forums. The guy I was talking about got a QX6850 from Intel for returning an ES chip.
 
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chedrz said:
You could try contacting Intel and letting them know that you have an ES chip. I've seen people on other forums get pretty nice rewards for sending back engineering samples. One guy on THF a few years ago bought an ES, called Intel, sent it back, and got a top-of-the-line Core 2 Extreme.

Just a thought.
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or you get punked for buying stolen property🙂
they can leave you with nothing..legally
 
Don't look at the ES, it's the stepping that matters. Pre-production steps are usually bad news. Those are the chips that go through the qualification stages JF mentioned (intel uses different names though). Once a product is qualified it goes through the testing much quicker and even first silicon should work fine.

i.r.t. op, E0 penryn = GTG

Examples of pre-production steppings would be lower than C0 for core i7 9xx or lower than B2 on a 65nm C2D. Don't use those.

If anyone has a A0/A1/A2 i7 9xx out in the wild, please post a cpu-z pic (lulz for me). In fact, A-step anything in the past 5 years, please post.
 
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0roo0roo said:
or you get punked for buying stolen property🙂
they can leave you with nothing..legally
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I don't know how likely that would be. Sure, they could legally do that, but if the OP bought it from a retail store/site who had it boxed/labeled as a retail chip, it's not his fault. I'm only going off of what I have actually heard of happening in these situations. The OP is seeking advice, I'm just giving him my $.02.

OP: If you bought the processor from a retailer (online or store), get in touch with Intel. They might want to know what store/site you purchased the chip from so they can get in touch with that retailer.

If you bought it from an individual/Ebay, keep it and say nothing.
 
The only real downside I can see to a normal stepping ES is that it is not as easy to unload a cpu thats an ES when you want to upgrade. In other words, say I want to sell mine, legally I should not be selling it.

Larry
 
It was purchased from an individual so no luck with stores there

I appreciate all the advice and information given here btw
 
Danyune said:
It was purchased from an individual so no luck with stores there

I appreciate all the advice and information given here btw
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Get some sort of monetary compensation or a full refund with shipping covered or threaten to ring up Intel.
 
Danyune said:
I purchased a Q9650 semi-recently and noticed it had "Intel Confidential" written on it. It boots up as a Q9650 in bios without any change.

Did I purchase an illegal CPU that should have never left the Intel facility? I read they were test chips but I don't know the rule about them being sold in public.
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intel LOANS engineering samples to select manufacturers for testings; those still belong to intel.
Anyone who sells them is thus stealing them. The processor you purchased is, quite literally, "stolen goods"

which is really unfortunate for you... what you do with this information is up to you.
 
I'm not even going to say what I could be using, but I could actually get my hands on things if I wanted 😉
 
JFAMD said:
I'm not even going to say what I could be using, but I could actually get my hands on things if I wanted 😉
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Can I get my hands on some of those products that are usually accessible only to select few in-the-know's? I mean, I've been in this hobby for a long time and no one has ever approached me with those "outreach" efforts. It's almost insulting! :biggrin:
 
punker said:
Send it back asking for a refund

they only cost pennies on the dollar and the person makes a huge profit on them

also some cores maybe disabled or

or lower clock speed SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE maybe disabled or non working

cache maybe bad


CORE DUO ES's or higher are crap and may have disabled items and may not overclock at all!


the ONLY GOOD ES chips are Pentium 4 woodies
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Yeah..you dont know what the heck you are talking about....

I received one from a person who reviews chips and obviously iNtel wouldn't send him a disfunctional chip when they want a decent cpu review....

I received it when quadcores were not even available to get. So ofcourse it was a c0 stepping Kentsfield. However this was a cherry picked chip because I was able to hit 3.5ghz without going over 10% vcore boost. At the time most were having trouble getting their Q6700 and QX6700s much past 3.2ghz...

So you said they are neutered .... wrong
So you said they are terrible ocers .... wrong

Have anything else you can pull out your arse?

PS: that chip is still running today adn still overclocked. I have had it on 4 different motherboards. I received it late 2006.
 
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Duvie said:
Yeah..you dont know what the heck you are talking about....

I received one from a person who reviews chips and obviously iNtel wouldn't send him a disfunctional chip when they want a decent cpu review....

I received it when quadcores were not even available to get. So ofcourse it was a c0 stepping Kentsfield. However this was a cherry picked chip because I was able to hit 3.5ghz without going over 10% vcore boost. At the time most were having trouble getting their Q6700 and QX6700s much past 3.2ghz...

So you said they are neutered .... wrong
So you said they are terrible ocers .... wrong

Have anything else you can pull out your arse?
Click to expand...

In addition to being cherry picked chips, they are often unlocked as well.
Generally speaking an engineering sample is a great chip to have in terms of performance. its the legality that is an issue, not the performance.
 
theres 2 types of them.

there are qualification samples which are the same as a retail one, and tehn there are the real ES samples that are before the final build.

that said, we have gotten dell servers retail from work that had them inside, and sometimes first batches of laptops have them.

intel generally doesnt care about them unless the cpu hasnt been released yet. usually when its already a released product they dont care.
 
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