- I signed a non-disclosure agreement with Intel
that prohibits me
from reviewing any of the
12th Gen core Alder Lake family chips
that they sent me until the embargo lifts.
What it doesn't prevent me from doing
is going out on the open market
and buying this core i9 12900K
engineering sample on Chinese Craigslist.
Is it legit?
How's it going to perform?
Should you go buy engineering samples to get early access
to upcoming platforms?
Will Intel ever talk to me again?
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(upbeat music)
This cost me 4500 Chinese Yuan,
which is about a 100 dollars more than a retail chip,
but I'm hands-on with what is supposedly
the core i9 12900K or at least some variation of it.
Now I've talked about this in detail before,
but when you buy anything other than a retail chip
in a sealed box, you're risking a number of things.
It could have been tampered with,
Maybe IHS swapped with another lesser CPU.
It could be faulty.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Or it could be an early engineering sample
with entirely different performance characteristics.
I believe that this one falls into that latter category.
Let's have a closer look at this thing.
So you can see it's not square.
Like Intel's old CPUs.
It says LGA 1700.
So it has 1700 contact pads on the bottom.
We can surmise that many of these extra pads
are for additional connectivity
or additional power delivery.
Theoretically, this is a top spec chip.
So it's gonna have 8 performance cores,
8 energy efficient cores,
and a total of 24 threads.
Since the performance course will have SMT
or hyper-threading
and the efficient cores will not.
Frankly it looks exactly like our retail sample
other than the fact that it says Intel confidential
at the top.
So, where did it come from?
Here's the thing,
for any new release,
Intel works with platform partners like ASUS and MSI
to ensure that when the new CPU's launched,
there are accompanying motherboards
and with partners like Crucial or G.Skill
to ensure that there are shiny new DDR5 memory kits
on the shelf right next to them.
In order for that to happen,
these partners need early access to processors.
Like, before the specs are even finalized
to test their hardware.
Hundreds, thousands of chips can go out
as part of the sampling process.
And inevitably some of them end up falling off a test bench
into a technician's pocket and onto the open market.
Once the retail chips launch,
these engineering samples turn from pretty hot
to pretty not.
Because no one in their right mind would pay full price
for a potentially broken CPU
when they can have a perfect one.
But that hasn't happened yet, has it?
Now, Anthony and I already did a video
outlining the main deets for the Z690 platform.
But here's what you guys need to know.
You can expect 16 lanes of PCI Express Gen 5
for your GPU or other high-performance add in carts
4 lanes of PCI Express Gen 4,
which is also coming directly off the CPU
for a high-speed NBME storage device
and a DMI 4.0 connection to the south bridge or IO hub
or whatever the heck they're calling it at this point.
It's about equivalent to two Gen 4 by 4 links,
which is double last Gen for lots of high-speed storage
and network connectivity.
For power users and workstation users,
I do hope to see the X699 ATDT platform
that leaked come to fruition sooner rather than later.
But this is a great start
and more than enough for most gamers.
The memory slots can be DDR5 or DDR4
with support for speeds of up to 4800 mega transfers
per second, or 3200.
Not at the same time, it's one or the other.
And any higher speeds are going to require
the integrated memory controller on the CPU
to be overclocked.
And that is one of the things that I'm expecting to be
kind of crap about my engineering sample.
You see, there are different kinds of engineering samples.
ES1 is typically gonna be pretty early,
often running at very low clock speeds
while they dial in the manufacturing process.
QS or qualifying sample is at the other end of the spectrum
and can have issues,
but it tends to be basically retail silicon
with a different stamp on the heat spreader.
ES2 which is what I have, in theory,
that lies somewhere in between.
So on paper,
this should be pretty close to full functionality,
but often with higher power consumption, lower clock speeds,
turd level memory compatibility,
especially when you're moving to a new type of memory,
DDR 5,
that kind of thing.
Oh, thermal compound.
I'm gonna need that.
What a gaming beast this thing is supposed to be.
We don't want any bottlenecks.
So we're going RTX 3090, very last gen technology, okay.
PCIe Gen 4.
I'm kidding, obviously.
I feel like I need to say that very fast.
Unfortunately, I'd have an LTT store desk pad over here,
and I'm not even showing off our best feature
that you can get it in any size you want
and it won't have to hang off the thing.
lttstore.com.
We have all different sizes.
Don't do this.
Don't be this guy.
Moment of truth Andy.
(switch clicks)
(CPU whirring)
That's a good sign.
Where's the remote?
Now the thing about unreleased hardware
is that you can't exactly just look up error codes
and see what problems other people have had
and how they've solved them.
This motherboard has a button called the retry button.
Should we try it?
Man, if I just got ripped off,
I'm gonna be pretty, not stoked.
Hi
- Hi
- It's not posting.
- Have you tried clearing the CMOS?
- Well, I couldn't find the pins.
- Is there... - There's a button on the IO.
I really hope I didn't just get completely,
I mean, I expected to get ripped off a little.
I was paying a 100 dollars over retail for an ES CPU.
You know, I do it for you, right?
- [Anthony] Can I have it, after that?
- No, no, not you.
I was playing at the camera.
(Anthony laughing)
If this doesn't work, I'm mostly out of options here.
I'm plugged directly into the onboard.
I actually don't know.
This might be at 12900 KF.
In which case it won't have any onboard video.
So everything is fine, except for that it isn't working.
This is why Dr. Su will always beat Pat Gelsinger
in a fight.
I wonder if Intel's done something to brick compatibility
with ES chips in retail BIOSs'.
(CPU whirring)
I've never heard of them doing that before,
but I also haven't played around with ES chips
for any of the most recent platforms.
So I'm gonna try another PCIe slot.
Maybe there's a problem with the Gen 5 slots or something
I don't know.
Should've bought two, that's the solution.
- After going through four more motherboards
from two different vendors, we've figured it out.
The POST codes seem to indicate that the CPU is working,
but we can't get a display out
because at some point in the validation process,
motherboard manufacturers switched over qualifying samples
or retail chips
and Intel issued a management engine update
that seems to break compatibility with ES 2 chips.
Since they are engineering samples
that ultimately are supposed to be returned to Intel
or discarded,
Intel is obviously not going to burn engineering resources,
fixing compatibility with them.
So Linus bought a paperweight.
I guess I'll call Linus and break it to him.
- Hey. - Hey,
so I got some bad news for you.
You just bought a $700 paperweight.
- Oh.
Okay.
- Yeah.
Like it powers on,
but it's like some version thing with the BIOS.
It's like just not gonna work.
- I wish it was at least heavier
'cause it's not a very good paperweight.
- Well, I mean,
you could weigh down one sheet of paper probably,
maybe up slightly.
- Thank you very much for that.
Okay, thanks for finishing the testing.
- Yep.
- Bye.
- To be honest,
while I was hoping to run some performance tests
ahead of the official release,
these kinds of compatibility issues are not that uncommon
with engineering sample chips.
And we've even seen examples before of sellers
who list not only their engineering sample for sale,
but also specific boards and BIOS revisions
that they have validated to work.
And maybe something like that
is going to emerge in the future
for these ES2 Alder Lake samples,
but as I outlined before,
whenever you're buying something like this,
your best case scenario is crappier performance
and, or weird bugs.
And your worst case scenario
is getting absolutely hosed by a shady seller.
No offense, no offense to the seller.
It's just that by definition,
anyone dealing in ES chips is a little shady.
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If you guys enjoyed this video,
maybe check out the ES chips that we bought
for our six workstations, one CPU project
after I accidentally dropped one of the official ones
that Intel gave me, rendering it inoperable.
Those ones, we locked out and they did work.
They just offered poorer performance because the clock speed
wasn't as high.