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    ES vs. OEM

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Phoenix_river, Feb 20, 2012.

  1. Phoenix_river

    Phoenix_river Newbie

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    Hi, I'm new here. I would like to know if there is any difference in performance between a 2920ES or 2920 OEM. I know the price is more but is it worth it in terms of better performance? I'm sorry if this question has probably been asked many times. Thanks in advance for any help that is offered.
     
    Phoenix_river, Feb 20, 2012
    #1
  2. superdave643

    superdave643 Notebook Geek

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    ES denotes Engineering Sample and are pre-production parts, usually an earlier stepping sent to equipment manufacturers for testing, evaluation, making boards around the chip, writing drivers, etc.

    There are zero performance advantages of an ES to finalized parts. They are cheaper because a) they're not supposed to be sold at retail; b) you will certainly not get any warranty from Intel/OEM; c) with an earlier stepping there may be errata that get corrected in the final product through process tweaks, MROM revisions, masking certain parts of the die out of use, etc.

    There are also QS chips (qualification sample). Using software analogy, think of ES as Beta, QS as RC (release candidate).
     
    superdave643, Feb 20, 2012
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  3. widezu69

    widezu69 Goodbye Alienware

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    Even though I know in my heart that there is usually no performance difference between either, I tend to always go OEM for piece or mind. I have owned an ES GPU mainly because it was a 6970m that could be unlocked to a 6990m :D
     
    widezu69, Feb 20, 2012
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  4. GeoCake

    GeoCake http://ted.ph

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    OEM Sandy Bridge XMs perform better in extreme overclocking than any ES/QS XM samples and can draw up to ~ 130 watts whereas ES/QS can't pass ~ 99 watts. Also the OEM samples seem to get slightly better benchmark scores at the same clock, e.g. at 4.4Ghz the OEM will be better. From the benchmarks I have seen the OEM version is stronger and more stable

    If you're working at a small overclock then they perform around the same
     
    GeoCake, Feb 20, 2012
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  5. SlickDude80

    SlickDude80 Notebook Prophet

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    Are you referring to the 2920ES on ebay at Shirley's CPU?

    If you are, please note that the default speeds are down 100mhz from oem...2.4 ghz - 3.4ghz vs 2.5ghz to 3.5ghz of the oem. Also, from my experiences, Shirley is awesome. My CPU is a 2820QS from Shirley...service was excellent and shipping was fast (same day). The price is cheap and the 2920ES is completely unlocked anyways so the 100mhz won't make a difference as it will be overclocked (as no one buys a 2920 without the intention of OC'ing it)
     
    SlickDude80, Feb 20, 2012
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