Thinkpads Forum

i never saw this color before - he says the gold top is a t9500 and the gray one is a t7400

It's a T9500, but it's also an engineering sample. The "ES" says so, as well as the model "Q4GG". That the top is gold might be the least of the differences. I would avoid this unless you know that it's 100% compatible with your mobo, and then it's still a bit more risky than buying a standard CPU.

Go for the SLAYX, or SLAQH retail versions, with the former being a bit more desirable for lower voltage.

Sometimes the backside of a silicon wafer is coated with an extremely thin layer of gold. Typically that would be done in order to provide a better electrical contact with the back of the die when it is bonded inside a package. Seeing how this CPU is not inside a package, I'm kind of surprised that the extra cost of the gold deposition was spent. But I supposed Intel can afford it .

interesting

i wonder if it would give a bad temperature reading and burn everything

?

Not sure about that, although, technically, an engineering sample might not have all the temperature sensors the retail CPU would have.

It could also have some known defects or may not meet all specifications. Those things would have usually been transmitted to whoever evaluated the chip.

About three weeks after the picture above was orginally posted online the same blogger posted some comments after using the cpu.
http://sz55gn.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/ ... g-vs-q174/