Eight-core Sandy Bridge Chip Listed on eBay

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There comes a time in every young processor’s life when it starts getting sampled to third parties. Once that happens, the chances of that next-generation processor appearing on auction sites like eBay rises considerably.

Case in point: Here’s an eight-core, hyper-threaded Sandy Bridge E-series processor that showed up on eBay just last week. Due in the fourth quarter of this year, the Sandy Bridge E chips are aimed directly at the enthusiast market. This chip, stamped with ‘Intel Confidential,’ boasts clock speeds of 1.60GHz and a 20MB of Level 3 cache. Intel's Turbo Boost technology has been disabled.

This listing has since been pulled (it’s likely Intel got wind of it). However, while it was live, the seller claimed the chip was ‘the only of its kind.’ Still, it might be hard to come by one now, we’re sure it will crop up some place else before Q42011. You just need to scrape together $1400 to make sure you can afford one when it does.

(via Engadget)

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Jane McEntegart
45 Comments Comment from the forums
  • And also come up with a motherboard...
    Reply
  • damian86
    It says it is no longer available. scammers, are they trying to get some free money..Its not even released yet.

    Anyway, its weird how the clock base is too low 1.6?
    Reply
  • saood06
    how will u run it without a motherboard that supports socket 2011(which you would need first)?
    Reply
  • kilo_17
    This looks like a monster CPU. I can't believe it has 20MB of cache, I don't know what cache does, but I know that's a lot.
    Reply
  • buzznut
    yeah 1.6 with no turbo....not for enthusiasts no matter how many threads.
    Reply
  • Marco925
    There are lots of engineering samples on ebay, maybe not that one, but as the value decreases you can get one cheap.
    Reply
  • 11796pcs
    kilo_17- I believe cache is onboard memory for the CPU, I believe it is supposed to store commands that are being frequently used for quick access by the CPU, if anyone finds my explanation wrong though please correct me.
    Reply
  • jprahman
    The cache does store frequently used instructions, although the main purpose is to store frequently used data. Main RAM takes as many as several hundred CPU clock cycles to access, cache on the other hand can be accessed in only a few clock cycles (L1 cache) or at most 30-40 cycles (L3 cache).
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    kilo_17This looks like a monster CPU. I can't believe it has 20MB of cache, I don't know what cache does, but I know that's a lot.Ya, LGA 2011 is a massive socket. Just google "LGA 2011". I was amazed the first time I saw leaked images of X79 motherboards. The socket looks disproportionately large on a standard ATX mobo. Although I'm not aware of any 8 core processors in Intel's Sandy Bridge-E launch lineup, it's almost certain an eight core derivative will come out eventually for the platform. The highest end launch processor I'm aware of will be a 6 core clocked at 3.3 GHz with 15MB L3 cache and an unlocked multiplier, MSRP around $1000.
    Reply
  • Zeh
    Clock is low because it is an Engineering Sample.
    Reply