Engineering sample vs retail version?

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450

Fully [H]
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Feb 19, 2007
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I dont have this card anymore but this question popped into my head. I used to have a Asus made nVidia 5900 Ultra 256MB that I bought on eBay. Everytime I started my computer it would display a message about the card being an engineering sample. The differences I noted were that unlike the retail Asus 5900U, my card was fanless and had a much bigger heatsink, but still took up only 1 slot. Also my card was clocked 100MHz faster (I used nVidia's drivers).

I don't have the card anymore because it died blowing up 1 of its capacitors.

What I'm asking is that what are these samples and what are they used for? Are they for reviewers? Or used for making drivers for these cards or what?
 
450 said:
I dont have this card anymore but this question popped into my head. I used to have a Asus made nVidia 5900 Ultra 256MB that I bought on eBay. Everytime I started my computer it would display a message about the card being an engineering sample. The differences I noted were that unlike the retail Asus 5900U, my card was fanless and had a much bigger heatsink, but still took up only 1 slot. Also my card was clocked 100MHz faster (I used nVidia's drivers).

I don't have the card anymore because it died blowing up 1 of its capacitors.

What I'm asking is that what are these samples and what are they used for? Are they for reviewers? Or used for making drivers for these cards or what?
Click to expand...

Engineering samples are used for a few different things :

1. Each "sample" that is produced is labled for version and tested extensively . Video cards are first tested in a software enviroment where all the technology gets checked over and over again before anything "physical" is produced and when that is all said and done it goes to through a number of other phases where it will at some point get "Taped out" I believe is the current term.. which basicly means physical samples or Engineering samples are being produced for testing.

2.Engineering samples (versions much later than the inital ones produced early on) are also sent out to review sites like this one (If for instance hardocp does a hardware review and a third party isn't stated for the title of the review like Asus,EVGA , BFG and instead is just a model number most of the time its a engineering sample. 100 precent chance if the product isn't released that its also one.


Hopefully thats completely accurate but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
 
thebeephaha said:
Tell me you didn't throw the card away over one cap... :(
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It was more than one cap. This... I think IC Chip it's called... Also blew.

Ignore my Indian finger...
IMGP1112.jpg
 
ES's are used to get good previews and hype rolling about how "overclockable" the card is ;)
 
Yeah, engineering samples use to be a little better than the final product.
 
Darn it! So maybe I should have kept the card even if it was fried.

I gotta admit, it was a nice card to game with! Played Halo PC with 1600 x 1200 everything on with just a 2.53GHz P4. Better than my 9800 Pro at 1400 x 1050!
 
They used to go out to review sites all the time... any time you heard of a "reference" card from nvidia or ATI being testing instead of a retail model those were engineering samples. I had several of them at one point from doing reviews and never found them to be any different than the retail cards, aside from the fact that you couldn't buy them.

Keeping the dead card wouldn't have done you any good, unless you wanted it as a novelty.
 
Nuker said:
Yeah, engineering samples use to be a little better than the final product.
Click to expand...

Not really. engineering samples either work really well or they work like shit. There isn't a ton of middle ground. It is true that engineering samples are often cherry picked in terms of overclocking, but that's not always the case.

We try to always use retail product whenever possible because the results can be quite a bit different between retail products and engineering samples. Sometimes you'll see an engineering product and it's one way and the retail product only passingly resembles the sample.
 
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