Word has come down from The almighty Inq that AMD is delivering free Barcelona engr samples to customers with the promise that they will get retail chips to replace them with.

We can perhaps assume that these are B3 samples smuggled out of Russia on the back of a pregnant camel.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inqu [...] quad-cores

I'd take one just so I can say I've got an engineering sample of anything

That would be cool. But then free always has been.

Nope, they are B2 samples.... Note the comment about virtualization. Guess giving them away is better than using them for landfill.

It would be cool to have an engineering sample, they are something I have always wanted to get.

Crap that spoiled my joke.

I want to get my hands on one

But hey... If you don't use virtualization, or a DB that can use all four cores and don't expect much of an overclock... For free, not a bad deal.

Hey, not bad at all! AMD is doing something charitable for once...not that Intel ever has

So how do I get one of these?

I've never heard of a chip making knowingly sending out defective CPUs with a promise to replace them later.

Any of the AMD people that are trying to say the errata isn't a big issue need to read this; because that obviously isn't the case.

Q4 numbers are going to be ugly.


Interesting find Baron, thanks for posting.

TC, What does defective mean in your mind? And why would anyone TAKE a DEFECTIVE chip?

Now thats funny. Mrsbytch calling somebody a fanboy. Baron, BECAUSE THEY ARE GETTING THEM FOR FREE. If AMD wanted to ship me free cpus ill take them in a heartbeat. Retail/ES samples/Bugged ill take them. I dont know how this would work. AMD sends you a chip kinda like netflix or something? Here is your cpu its free but when the retail ones are out you can buy that one. If the samples are working why would anybody by the retail.

Good job for NOT reading. They're giving away Opteron engineering samples. I do see some heavy-load server applications and virtualization being used in a lot of companies today!

You're right. If the chips were defective they'd have to make some kind of work around or fix that would probably have some kind of trade off. It the chips were defective they'd probably be offering free upgrades to non-defective chips.

Oh wait... They are doing that stuff.

Baron, AMD admits they have problems with the chips, it's ok for you to admit it too.