Engineer version CPU

C

coolpurplefan

Gawd
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Feb 19, 2006
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547
I bought an Intel E6850 on eBay and just found out later it was an engineer version. It was for an old Asus P5Q motherboard that stayed in a box for years so I decided to build it up. Does anyone think I should take a chance and use it or send it back and get a new one? I wanted to keep it long term.
 
It's not legal to purchase an ES CPU. They are technically owned by Intel and not allowed to be bought or sold. However in this case I doubt they would care so much about a 8+ year old CPU and it would most likely cost a good percentage of the price to send it back.
 
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It is surprising (to me anyways) how many Engineering Samples are floating around. A number of used CPUs I've purchased ended up being ES's without the seller ever telling me. As long as they worked I never raised a fuss (even though I didn't like it much at first).
 
If we want to go all anal on this.

You are an accessory to a crime, as the seller and you know it belongs to Intel and it is not legal to trade.

In the eyes of the law, you have to return the CPU and report the seller for selling stolen property or breaking an agreement with Intel.

In real life, nobody cares.

You can find ES samples of almost every Intel CPU on ebay and Intel must know about this by now, yet they do nothing.
The ban on ES cpus in the FS/FT on [H] seems to be a mixture of precaution & anal mod, as nobody seems to care about the small amount of ES processors being sold.
 
Speaking of engineering samples, why is it that the Haswell engineering samples kicked ass and the production CPUs were total shit?
 
aphexcoil said:
Speaking of engineering samples, why is it that the Haswell engineering samples kicked ass and the production CPUs were total shit?
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The paranoid conspiracy theory version:
Engineering samples frequently (almost always?) go out as review units to various places. You do the math from there.

The likely more realistic version:
ES versions may be the first off the lines so they may be scrutinized more than the normal retail or OEM versions.

note: zero real insider knowledge here, just idle speculation.
 
aphexcoil said:
Speaking of engineering samples, why is it that the Haswell engineering samples kicked ass and the production CPUs were total shit?
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The fabs used to test in dev CPUs are much higher accuracy.

Having to use normal fabs would slow down development.

Having a high quality fab that the devs can use to test chips quickly is a must.
 
If you're worried about stability and longevity of the CPU, it's old already and has probably been used for a number of years. There isn't anything uniquely different about an ES cpu than a normal one, except it may have been put through a more strenuous testing procedure than one destined for the market. But it's probably been in use for a number of years so I would take it for face value as an 8 year old cpu that's seen a lot of use. If it hasn't died so far it's fine.
 
I had a TNT2 Ultra 64MB ES back in the day. It was faster than anything until the GeForce 2 cards appeared.
 
I think Intels main concern is having a reviewer selling a product not yet released to the consumer market. Much more than having someone end up buying an ES CPU thats been out of production for years.

In regards to die quality. I've heard many times that many of the late production ES CPU's can withstand higher temperature and wattage limits than the production counterparts. Obviously all of these chips get fabricated by the same plants, using the same process, so the only thought I could have on the subject is the ES samples being much smaller runs use better quality masks and or silicon.
 
GRAFiZ said:
[...]the only thought I could have on the subject is the ES samples being much smaller runs use better quality masks and or silicon.
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Masks and silicon are generally not going to be different; more likely the engineering samples are binned fast-fast parts.
 
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coolpurplefan said:
What does that mean fast-fast parts? If you don't overclock, are there still some differences?
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ES procs come in all sorts of variants. I've seen/heard of ES Xeon CPUs that are in hardware say 6c12t or 8c16t with only 2c4t turned on and the clock frequency cranked up.
 
coolpurplefan said:
What does that mean fast-fast parts? If you don't overclock, are there still some differences?
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FF is a process corner where through variation in the manufacturing process some chips will have fast PMOS devices and fast NMOS devices. These chips can generally (but not always) run at higher clock frequencies and consume less power.

When semiconductor dies are prepared and packaged they are typically tested to see what process corner they are (also known as binning). It's possible that the engineering samples floating around are from the FF bin.
 
Having owned engineering samples I wouldn't touch them unless they're super cheap because they tend to be early revision with bugs. Also, since it's not mainstream BIOS support and even OS can drop support for them. As a general rule of thumb when you buy hardware you want the latest revision available at the time.
 
mi7chy said:
Having owned engineering samples I wouldn't touch them unless they're super cheap because they tend to be early revision with bugs. Also, since it's not mainstream BIOS support and even OS can drop support for them. As a general rule of thumb when you buy hardware you want the latest revision available at the time.
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That is 100% true.

So unless you got it very cheap I would send it back, assuming the seller did not tell you it was an ES cpu.

I have an ES cpu, and since it is an early stepping, I can't even update my BIOS because it will not recognise my CPU.
 
A non E6850 ES chip goes for like $20 to $25 shipped. I am not sure what the OP paid for this one but it probably will not be worthwhile to ship it back.
 
mi7chy said:
Having owned engineering samples I wouldn't touch them unless they're super cheap because they tend to be early revision with bugs. Also, since it's not mainstream BIOS support and even OS can drop support for them. As a general rule of thumb when you buy hardware you want the latest revision available at the time.
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Very rarely would you end up finding an ES CPU with actual "bugs". By the time ES CPU's reach circulation, it's almost always ES2 state. If there are bugs, they're not serious bugs, instead they would relate to wake states or advanced instruction limitations. Something 99% of users would never even notice.

An ES0 would most certainly have problems, but you would NEVER find one of these floating around unless it'd already been turned into a keychain. Even an ES1 would be a stretch... and by that point, most serious problems have already been addressed.

BIOS support can become an issue, however, who updates their bios once their system is stable?

Lack of OS support is highly, VERY highly unlikely.

Should you seek out ES chips? Of course not. BUT, if you got one for free... there's no concern with running them.

UNLESS they're future release skus, then you might want to send them into Intel. ;)
 
Definitely use it, Intel is not going to come after you for a discontinued part. Not worth the hassle of returning it at this point.
 
jimmyb said:
Most engineering samples I've seen have very serious bugs and are usually totally non-functional.
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Well, can't help you... I've been in this crap as a professionl and enthusiast for many many years, ES CPU's have been around since as far back as I can remember. Hell, I've been given ES CPU's as "swag" from both Intel and AMD. I've never had a problem.

And, if you scour the internets, yes, all the internets, you won't find anyone who claims any problems beyond their own creation when using ES CPU's.

Not saying it can't happen... but most CPU's are simply revisions of past designs. Sure, things are added, things are changed, blah blah... but a CPU isn't even stamped out without there being a pretty solid mathmatical foundation for functionality.

ES0 CPU's are the only ones I've ever heard of that might have real noticeable functionality problems, but, ES0 CPU's are made is such low numbers and for such a small group of testing that finding one out on the market would be next to impossible. By the time ES1 and ES2's are floating around to OEM's and reviewers, they're damn near production quality.

So, can't speak to your own personal experiences, but from my experiences, yours would most certainly be the minority.
 
Looks like it's been mounted. In any case, here are the markings:
Intel '05 E6850
Intel Croe 2 Duo
SLA9U Costa Rica
3.00 GHz 4M 1333 06
381 0A147 (and a circle which has what I think is E4 written inside)
 
I'm using an ES E3-1265Lv2 right now in my sigrig. Unfortunately I do not know the origin of the CPU.
I didn't purchase it. It was given to me, and i did not know it was an ES till i looked at CPU-Z (assuming cpu-z is correct)

bae90a076f.png
 
You could check the IHS, they usually say Intel Confidential on them if they are ES chips.
 
mi7chy said:
Having owned engineering samples I wouldn't touch them unless they're super cheap because they tend to be early revision with bugs. Also, since it's not mainstream BIOS support and even OS can drop support for them. As a general rule of thumb when you buy hardware you want the latest revision available at the time.
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jimmyb said:
Most engineering samples I've seen have very serious bugs and are usually totally non-functional.
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I've never seen it either. As GRAFiZ says, these chips in the wild are usually very solid. The super early versions can be unstable, but those rarely leave a lab. I saw one once. When the quad core desktop chips weren't even on the horizon, an engineer brought one by to test on a released motherboard. It was cool, but he wouldn't let it out of his sight. I tried pretty hard to get ahold of it just for a little while to play with, and no way.

At a certain job I used to do, I literally had piles of engineering samples (I have photos!), and we used them in "production" use to show off the tech. Never any crashed due to the CPU.

We sent them off to review sites occasionally--whole machines--with "ES" models. I think we sent one to the Fatal1ty guy, too (here! have a desktop! you really like Intel now!)

ETA: We had several engineering sample motherboards & NICs as well. Often the motherboards were reduced-feature boards of the commercial versions. They worked fine, but we traded them out as soon as we could get enough "real" versions.


=Gunslinger= said:
Definitely use it, Intel is not going to come after you for a discontinued part. Not worth the hassle of returning it at this point.
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Most likely for this old of a product, no. However, (in some areas) Intel is very aggressive at hunting them down. I remember an acquaintance at a store I worked at for a few months getting nabbed for trying to sell an engineering sample on Craig's List. :rolleyes:
 
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Suprfire said:
...i did not know it was an ES till i looked at CPU-Z (assuming cpu-z is correct)
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The information that CPU-Z displays in its Specification box is the data that Intel writes directly to the CPU at the factory. If if shows (ES) in that box, it is definitely an ES processor.

The good news for you Suprfire is that your ES CPU has the exact same CPUID 0x306A9 as the E3-1265L v2 retail CPUs have. That means that functionally your CPU should be identical to the retail CPU.

Each time Intel fixes some bugs, they produce a new CPU and they increase the CPUID value. If you found one of these on EBay and it had a CPUID of 0x306A4, that would be a very early CPU in the development cycle and I would avoid one of those. Your CPU was released at the very end of the development cycle and was likely one of the CPUs that went to some magazine or internet testing site just before the retail CPUs were officially released.
 
unclewebb said:
The information that CPU-Z displays in its Specification box is the data that Intel writes directly to the CPU at the factory. If if shows (ES) in that box, it is definitely an ES processor.

The good news for you Suprfire is that your ES CPU has the exact same CPUID 0x306A9 as the E3-1265L v2 retail CPUs have. That means that functionally your CPU should be identical to the retail CPU.

Each time Intel fixes some bugs, they produce a new CPU and they increase the CPUID value. If you found one of these on EBay and it had a CPUID of 0x306A4, that would be a very early CPU in the development cycle and I would avoid one of those. Your CPU was released at the very end of the development cycle and was likely one of the CPUs that went to some magazine or internet testing site just before the retail CPUs were officially released.
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Cool! Thanks for the information. It's nice to know. :)
 
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