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Normal Topic Hardware (Read 2159 times)
HgMan
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Re: Hardware
Reply #2 - 12/06/14 at 02:02:00
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Thanks for this! I've taken a couple of years away from chess. When I left, Rybka was just starting to assert itself against the old guard of Fritz, Shredder, Hiarcs, and Junior. Now I hardly recognize the names of any of the top chess programs...
  
"Luck favours the prepared mind."  --Louis Pasteur
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Vladimir
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Re: Hardware
Reply #1 - 12/06/14 at 00:12:55
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1. The rule of thumb that is usually bandied about is that each doubling of speed (and similarly calculation time) is worth approximately 50-70 Elo on average. Going from one core to more doesn't result in linear speedup. Two cores will not be twice at fast, but maybe 1.8 times as fast. Four cores may have a speedup of 3.4, and so on. The higher the split, the more search overhead that brings the speedup down. That is also why using hyperthreading for chess engines is usually frowned upon.

2a. Probably a pretty big one, especially for the more under-powered Air. Compared to, say, the TCEC tournament's computer, it could be a literal order of magnitude slower. Nevertheless, you can always compensate speed with more calculation time. 

2b. Komodo and Stockfish are both available for Macs. Houdini seems to say it's not available natively. 

3. I haven't heard of any differences, but then I've never had a Mac. 

4. The name "engine" is somewhat apropos because it's dropped under the hood of the GUI, but is tuned separately. It's a high-performance feat of engineering where each percentage point of speedup you gain is another Elo point on the rating list. The GUI just parses its output and prettifies it. GUIs should have a negligible impact on performance, which means just work with what's most comfortable to you. There's quite a few free offerings here and commercial like Shredder and HIARCS Chess Explorer. As far as I know, Chessbase and Aquarium don't have native Mac versions.
  
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HgMan
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Hardware
12/05/14 at 22:57:00
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I appreciate that chess engine strength (or, more accurately, speed) is dependent upon computer hardware. A few questions:

1. Given infinite analysis situations, how much of a disadvantage is a smaller/slower/weaker computer? How much slower are engines working on a single core compared to dual or multi?
2a. I'm a Mac user. What kind of a performance difference is there between a Macbook Air and a bigger, faster desktop?
2b. At how much of a disadvantage are Mac users in the current chess engine environment?
3. Working in OS X, are there any significant differences between Stockfish 5 on a Mac compared with the PC version?
4. What role GUI? Can anyone recommend the strongest GUI for Mac?

Thanks in advance.
  
"Luck favours the prepared mind."  --Louis Pasteur
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