Some unreleased Ivy Bridge processors are up on eBay. Not only that, but some Chinese sites still have some listings up.

This goes to show that someone somehow got some engineering samples and leaked them so that the world may experiment with them before the formal announcement.

The Santa Clara, California-based company won't formally introduce the delayed collection until a month or so from now.

Nevertheless, a third-generation Core IB chip is listed on Chinese site Taobao, for a price of 1550 RMB, or $246 / 184.50 Euro.

Additionally, a Core i7-2770K is priced at $440 - $475 (330 to 356.25 Euro) and some Xeon E3-1200v2 series can be found at around $220 / 165 Euro.

To give one example, the Xeon E3-1230v2 can be found at $225 here (168.65 Euro).  Nevertheless, the listings that concern us the most are the ones on eBay, since Chinese websites aren't that easy to navigate for people who don't know the language, even with Google Translate.

Not that it is impossible to deal with Taobao and the others. After all, English-speaking Taobao agents can handle all negotiations with sellers and reship the CPUs, although this will mean a 10% or higher extra fee.

At any rate, searching through eBay may net results like the Core i5-3570K for $319 or Xeon E3-1230v2 CPU for $299. That's 239 Euro and 224 Euro, respectively.