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Subject: Re: Old on new, New on slower

Author: Antonio Dieguez

Date: 10:09:08 10/18/01

Go up one level in this thread


On October 18, 2001 at 12:52:20, José Carlos wrote:

>On October 18, 2001 at 10:58:26, Chris Taylor wrote:
>
>>On October 18, 2001 at 07:22:26, José Carlos wrote:
>>
>>>On October 17, 2001 at 15:28:30, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>>
>>>>On October 17, 2001 at 14:56:16, Chris Taylor wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>I have played Fritz 3.10 against newish progams.
>>>>>F3 ran on an AMD 1200 inside F6 gui, using General.ctg
>>>>>1 x 1200 played against the PIII 733, the other played against the AMD 800
>>>>>The opponants
>>>>>
>>>>>PIII 733 Gambit Tiger 2.0, WcraftyP3 1811.  This was offered as optimised for
>>>>>P3...
>>>>>Tiger ran with its own book, in F6 gui.  Wcrafty's book is from Bob's site.
>>>>>Crafty ran under Remi Coulom's wbenging0047, with full auto232.
>>>>>
>>>>>AMD 800 Junior 4.6, Junior 6. Both versions of Junior ran under F6 gui, with
>>>>>Junior.ctg
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>One of the oldest programs, that can run on my newest machines.  Versus some
>>>>>newish stuff.
>>>>>
>>>>>Game in 1 hour...
>>>>>
>>>>>Junior 4.6 v Fritz 3.10 4-2
>>>>>Junior +3 -1 =2
>>>>>
>>>>>Junior 6 v Fritz 3.10   4½-1½
>>>>>Junior +3 -0 =3
>>>>>
>>>>>Gambit Tiger 2.0 v Fritz 3.10 5½-½
>>>>>Tiger +5½ -0 =1
>>>>>
>>>>>WcraftyP3 1811 v Fritz 3.10 4-2
>>>>>Crafty +3 -1 =2
>>>>>
>>>>>Just a small sample of games.  Anyone wanting the pgn file of 24 games is
>>>>>welcome to it.
>>>>>
>>>>>Chris Taylor
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Is anybody still wondering if there have been progress in chess programming in
>>>>the last years?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    Christophe
>>>
>>>  I don't say there isn't. It'd be absurd. But a couple of remarks:
>>>
>>>  a. Your statement seems to imply that such a small number of games proves "the
>>>progress". I guess I got you wrong because you always claim a lot of games are
>>>needed to make any conclusion.
>>>  b. If by "progress in chess programming" you mean "software-only progress"
>>>(whatever that means -that concept is beyond my understanding, because I always
>>>optimize my code for a certain kind of hardware-), no conclusion can be made
>>>without testing in both new and old hardware. For example, if Fritz 3 is to be
>>>evaluated, 486-33 would be a good hardware to test the programs in. Then,
>>>comparing results in both kind of hardware would yield more interesting
>>>conclusions.
>>>
>>>  José C.
>>
>>I only did a taster, a small sample. I did not want to tie the computers up for
>>a week per match up.  Just so there could be a clearer result.  Over 4 programs
>>all giving Fritz 3 the beating, it seems a strong indication of old on shows
>>little improvment
>>
>>I would like to take this further.  If I could get or borrow a pair of slow
>>computers and then run the test with new programs on old slow computers.  Then I
>>will go ahead.
>>
>>A question I have would the likes of Tiger, Fritz 6, etcetera, run on an old
>>computer?  Are they not compiled for the new stuff.
>>
>>The slowest computer I can get my hands on is a P 150.  I can buy this for £35.
>>It would not even be a waste of money as I could do word-pro on it.
>>
>>I see so many variables in speed, program opimization, would it be worthwhile?
>>
>>Chris
>
>  Yes I understand what you intended, my message was answering Christophe's.
>  I don't know if the Tigers will run in old computers. I think that if you
>install Win95 on them, the Tigers will run fine.
>  And yes, the reason why I suggest to test in old computers is what you say:
>speed, optimizations, etc... For example, we use a lot of memory nowadays
>because it's cheap and fast. So we code many things in arrays. If I had to run
>on a 486 with 4Mb, I'd have to change my code, otherwise I'd be hitting virtual
>memory all the time, and run at 200 nodes per second.
>  In old times, programmers knew the hardware they were running on, and used the
>best instructions/techniques/algorithms they had to make their programs fast.
>And they were very good doing that. But those instructions/techniques/algorithms
>are not the best we can use _now_, because new hardware gives us possibilities
>they didn't have then.
>  This is why I have so hard time figuring out what "software-only improvements"
>mean.

Right, we can't compare it seems. But I'm sure that if you ask Frans Morsch
about Fritz 3 he could tell you that he could do some modifications to it to
make it play much better even on the same old hardware.



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