Hey TBMS,
Here is what you wanted to know….

Almost all of those chips in the links I gave are set prices. Yahoo auctions is just an auction site and doesn’t handle payments etc, so it is buyer beware. However, being Japan and a bonafide way of selling things to people, it has very very few scams. People’s reputations mean a lot on the website.
However, as a foreigner living in Japan, it is tricky to register to use it. So I got my friend to use membership and buy the chips for me.
A google search of “buying on Yahoo auctions” will explain things further.
Having said that, here are the pertinent things you are looking for…


From top to bottom

現在の価格 – Current selling price (tends to have an auctioneers hammer and gavel next to it so that you can make a bid if you can bid)
即決価格 – Price wanted. If there is a button with a shopping cart on it, that is the buy it now price.
Those with only a shopping cart are fixed price items. Those with a shopping cart and a hammer and gavel have a current price and a final buy it now (auction will finish) price.
Those with only the hammer and gavel have no upper limit and hence no buy it now price.

残り時間 – How long is left. 5 日 = 5 days. 9 時間 = 9 hours
入札件数 – number of bidders
開始日時 ： 3月 11日(水) 17時 41分

Time bid was placed : 3rd Month (March), 11th day (Wednesday) 17hrs41mins
終了日時 ： 3月 14日(土) 22時 36分

Time auction will end : March 14th (sat) 22:36


Here is the chip that I bought with the help of my friend.
http://page13.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/r121706076

We won with a bid of 90,555. It was bid on 48times and the auction lasted from Dec 5th 00:11 to Dec 7th 00:22.

Then the buyer got in touch with us and he was happy with the bid price and accepted it. We wired the money to him and he sent us the chip.
I then asked him if he had a second chip in stock and he did. After sending me specs and chatting, he sold it to me for 80% of the price, 72444. All of this was without using the site.

Vcd683s, thank you! You went well beyond what could be expected here on this forum. Hopefully others will also benefit from your explanation.

About the japanese letters - I'm leaning forward, with my nose pressed against the screen, and still having problems differentiating between the signs. I guess it takes practice. However, it's interesting to see the prices in Japan and maybe later on I'll buy the next processor there.

Here is another cheap 12-core ES-processor, but this one is slower than yours. Looking at it I'm thinking, how do I know if it's any good? I'm also thinking I should probably by a motherboard first, before I buy an ES-processor. That way everything will be in place for testing when I receive the processor. Do you know any good stress-software for testing a processor during the week when the seller offers a money-back guarantee?

Also, is this - 出品者の情報 - the name of the seller's store? He seems trustworthy.

Edit: Have you searched for processors on japans eBay?

vcd683s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xe...26xx_.28dual-processor.29 suggests that a retail cpu pair of SB xeons should run at 3.1 and the v2 with 10 cores is the same. If yours is a v3 however then 2.9 on 12 cores is correct.

Yes, if your cpu fails to get the full turbo speed it is likely because it was not needed during the testing phase.

Hi Mumak. Yeah, your HWInfo tool is so helpful. I wish more sellers would use it while running a stress test to show us what they are really selling

:-D
writing something like that doesn't mean I have all the knowledge in the world ;-)

I'm sorry, but further information of this kind is classified, so it cannot be discussed in the public.
Only a sub-set of public erratas for production parts is disclosed in public CPU specification updates.