Sad that ES is needed to compete these days

Im not a whiner and im not against ES chips, I wish i was lucky enough to get them so let me get that out there first but come on now, when ES chips on average range 500mhz (i5 perfect example) or so above retail when is it too much? PS I know not every ES is a stong clocker either but every single new intel CPU i670,i660,i661 (we wont count 980x as its not public retail yet) the top ten results are the ES chips that are godlike, every work record as well. How do you compete with that being someone that pays for my own goods? Honestly not being cocky I have as much skill clocking as the next day, I spring for ln2 gear but all the cold and tweaking in the world wouldnt get those results.

I think there is a place for the ES results, I mean who doesnt love to see 7ghz spi runs etc but honestly its a huge turn off to me. Sorry for venting like this and im sure I will get flamed but Im just frustrated is all.

PS I wont stop grinding, and doing the best I can

When you say "top ten results", what do you mean specificly?

I tend to agree when you say that at the moment the ES seem to be leading to better scores, but (as you already said as well) there are also a whole lot of bad ES samples. In most cases, it's about having the right combination. That being said, I had a peek at es/retail rankings:

SuperPI 1M: 8th - http://hwbot.org/community/submission/958876_

SuperPI 32M: 11th - http://hwbot.org/community/submission/902706_ (note: because of Gulftown)

Wprime 32M (2x): 5th - http://hwbot.org/community/submission/972910_

Wprime 32M (4x): 1st - http://hwbot.org/community/submission/935049_

Wprime 1024M (2x): 5th - http://hwbot.org/community/submission/972911_

Wprime 1024M (4x): 1st - http://hwbot.org/community/submission/935045_

Doesn't look thát bad? Most of the top 3D scores are with retail cards as well. A lot of binning is needed however.

Well here are some

Pifast = 1 non ES in top 10, 4 non es in top 20

1-4 ES 980x

5 ES 670

6 ES 980x

7 ES 670

8 ES 670

9 ES 980x

11 ES 980x

13 ES 670

14 ES 661

15 ES 670

18 ES 660

20 ES 980x

Spi1m = 3 non ES top 10, 6 non ES top 20

1-3 ES 670

4 ES 980x

5-7 ES 670

11-12 ES 670

13 ES 980x

14 ES 670

18 ES 670

20 ES 660

spi32m = 1 non ES top 10, 7 non ES top 20

1-5 ES 980x

6 ES x5667

7 ES 670

8 ES x5667

9 ES 670

11 ES 660

13-14 ES 980x

.

I know what you are trying to say and I'm not trying to contest that ES currently correlate with higher ranks in HWBOT. All I'm trying to show is that it's not like you absolutely need an ES to get somewhere in the top-10, but that it's also possible with a good retail. I don't really have a view on the amount of ES samples that have been binned by those who are on top and how many retails have been binned.

Appreciate your professional response MM as always, you guys are very professional here Just lately is seems the ES are getting better and better as compared to retail. They suck ya in the the ES results but I guess thats just good marketing and pretty smart. I fall for it ever time and probably why i will be on board with the crappy first revision retail i980x that will be exploding out on the 16th.

to sad that al the ES are master in the top 20 the ES are getting better and better as compared to retail.

fair play ES vs retail not fair

let's vote on the people who post scores on hwbot i think only retail cpu's on hwbot thats fair. ES = review material

Just lately is seems the ES are getting better and better as compared to retail. They suck ya in the the ES results but I guess thats just good marketing and pretty smart. I fall for it ever time and probably why i will be on board with the crappy first revision retail i980x that will be exploding out on the 16th.

At first sight, that does indeed seem true: ES looks to outwin retail each and every time. But, I think we need to make a couple of sidenotes to this story.

First and for all, most of the people who have an ES way beyond the realms of retail overclockability have this kind of sources that allows CPU bining at a very large scale. Having access to a lot of samples allows a person to gather data on overclockability and pre-select certain steppings or batch codes. If, by luck, this person finds what most of us would call "the golden stepping", it's possible to gather a lot of samples of this one batch and start the binning process. It's a fact that the 7GHz samples are not 'lucky samples' but the outcome of the search for a highly overclockable sample.

That being said, it remains the question whether this kind of binning on retail samples can also bring the same quality of silicon or not. At the moment, I can see **DP**, Mortisboy and the Japanese who seem to have found a good retail chip and the Japanese have already showed on the forums that they have binned quite a lot of chips. As for **DP**, I think he has about three of the same batch and for Mortisboy I don't know.

Another thing that affects the perception of ES versus retail difference is that the speed binning doesn't happen at the day of the release, but months before any retail sample is available. From that point of view it actually makes sense that the ES samples come forward as strong as they are: when you start binning months before the release, there are no retail samples available yet.

Another thing to remember is: those who have an ES sample at their disposal which clocks relatively alright might not test any retail samples to check if there's a similar clocking product. Or they might give up after two/three bad samples. You see ... if you have a good clocking chip that serves your needs ... do you need to waste LN2 on a sample that might not be as good? And if you do, would you go for an unknown retail stepping or an ES stepping that is known to be quite good?

Again, I'm not trying to defend the ES people here and I fully understand your point of view. I just can't help but wonder if this ES versus retail discussion is founded on a true silicon quality difference or the perception that there is due to reasons like I've mentioned above.

As for the retail Gulftowns, I have my doubts whether the superiority of the A0 silicon will last long. As far as I can see from my (be it ES as well) B1 chip, I'm kind of leaning to the side that says B1 will do fine. As long as you're lucky enough to find a coldbugfree B1, I think it should be possible to come close to the A0 revision chips. I don't know for sure, of course, but the first signs seem to be pointing in that direction.

let's vote on the people who post scores on hwbot i think only retail cpu's on hwbot thats fair. ES = review material

I'm reluctant to have a poll that is biased from the beginning.

I'm with the wait option.

If in 1-1.5 month from now nobody with a retail 980X manages to bench vantage at 6.2GHz I think it's safe to say that the Q3FE & a few Q3QP samples are far superior than the retail B1 980X's and they need to be excluded.

You expect that in one and a half months people to catch up with several months of ES binning? We are talking €1000 CPUs here.

You expect that in one and a half months people to catch up with several months of ES binning? We are talking €1000 CPUs here.

We're also talking about people who buy those 5-5 or even 10-10, and some others who RMA them more than... often

2 months should be more than sufficient if 1.5 month doesn't sound good enough.

There are at least 50 users who'll buy a 980X during the launch day, and more definitely another 100 in April.

This is a never ending debate.

Now that the chips are retail (well...soon to be) they are open to anyone with the money and come with warranty... more people will be able and or comfortable to jump on the hexcore bandwagon.

ES binning I suspect is slower than retail binning

IMHO

the retail just came out...the retail results will come out more. nda was holding some back.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=247273

For 'slow speeds' and stressful benches like wPrime you would be crazy to run it on ES's as they die quickly.

Nice run by Hiwa.

It's not who you know, it's who you blow Splave. You're just as talented as the guys on top. Until I see them buying hardware out of their own pockets and pounding it like you do, you're accomplishments are actual accomplishments.

I'm with the wait option.

If in 1-1.5 month from now nobody with a retail 980X manages to bench vantage at 6.2GHz I think it's safe to say that the Q3FE & a few Q3QP samples are far superior than the retail B1 980X's and they need to be excluded.

Ditto !

Then you have some pissed off people who got the there gem chips the hard way... There are ways to get these chips.. ebay is one of them..

Then you have some pissed off people who got the there gem chips the hard way... There are ways to get these chips.. ebay is one of them..

Q3FEs are nowhere to be found.

Q3QPs have lower chances of hitting that crazy clocks you've seen.

And both die in a short period of time with extreme overclocking.

And you also need to realize that you are splashing out 1000$+ for a product that might die soon and has no warranty at all.

The guys who have the good clocking Q3FEs/Q3QPs didn't spend a dime getting them, they are samples.

They don't clock as well as the Q3FEs & good Q3QPs do, other than that nada ( nothing ).

I'd exclude the Q3QPs & Q3FEs.

The rest E.S. seem to be very close to the retail B1 stepping in terms of overclocking, so it wouldn't be nice for the "buyers" to block those too.

Q3FE on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-Core-i7-980X-EE-ES-Gulftown-FREE-SHIPPING-NEW_W0QQitemZ130372499250QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCPUs?hash=item1e5ace7732