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Subject: Re: . . . M O R E . . . S P E E D . . .

Author: Aaron Gordon

Date: 17:16:55 08/17/03

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On August 17, 2003 at 15:27:15, William Penn wrote:

>On August 15, 2003 at 18:10:17, Aaron Gordon wrote:
>
>>On August 15, 2003 at 16:27:54, William Penn wrote:
>>
>>>I have had a 500MHz Celeron/256MB system for quite a few years. I just bought a
>>>new 2.6GHz Celeron/512MB computer and was expecting my chess software to run
>>>about 5X faster. It doesn't!? After considerable comparisons and benchmarking,
>>>it's clear that it runs about 2.2X faster. My tests & benchmarks are based on
>>>kN/s in infinite analysis mode using various practical chess positions and the
>>>Shredder 7.04 UCI engine in the CB GUI.
>>>
>>>What is the most important single other factor (besides processor speed) that
>>>would increase the speed of this engine in terms of kN/s? I'm sure that more RAM
>>>wouldn't do very much. Is it "BUS speed", or "memory speed", or "processor cache
>>>size", or "processor type", or what? I'm not interested in minor factors, just
>>>the most important one.
>>>WP
>>
>>This is what Intel counts on, people only looking at the MHz. Unfortunately you
>>got stiffed by Intel. Lots of benchmarks show the Celeron 2.2 overclocked to
>>well over 3GHz losing to a Duron 1.2GHz in most things, which should scale to
>>about what you have been seeing.
>>
>>The Pentium 4 is the same way (just not as bad). The best bet would be to get a
>>2800+ Athlon XP chip (if you don't want to overclock) as its the fastest MHz
>>wise (2250MHz) of any of the Athlons for chess, and faster than any of the P4s
>>out today for chess as well. If you'd prefer lots of speed and some
>>overclocking, try one of my 2.4-2.5GHz Athlon XP pretested chips.. They'll put
>>you up near P4-4GHz speed chess-wise and blow a P4-3.2 out of the water at
>>everything else.
>>
>>I've already done the tests vs a P4-2.53 @ 3.32GHz in multiple applications
>>(divx, mp3 encoding, compiling, encryption/decryption, sciencemark, chess, etc),
>>the P4-3.32 lost by a significant ammount in most of the tests. Plus, at $79 for
>>the 2.4GHz Athlon XP (3200-3400+ IMO) isn't bad at all..
>>
>>Here are some chess benchmarks:
>>http://www.newageoc.com/crafty/bench.html
>>
>>Note: I don't have any freon-cooled Athlon systems tested yet (at 3.4GHz), so
>>that would beat the P4-4GHz w/ HT by quite a bit. The top Athlon on there is the
>>2.5GHz and that is AIR cooled. The top P4 is FREON (-50 celsius) cooled.
>>
>>You can see from here the 2.2GHz Athlon (Athlon XP 2800+ is 50MHz faster) beats
>>a P4-3.25GHz. Celeron 1GHz (p3 core) is faster than a Pentium 4 1.5GHz, and an
>>Athlon XP 1.86GHz (about like a 2200+) is almost equal to a P4-3GHz. Even the
>>Pentium 3 1.12GHz beats a P4-1.6GHz. Good job Intel. :)
>>
>>Intel has it pretty sweet, though. Only company I know that can produce a
>>product sigificantly worse than the last one and charge people 4-5 times more
>>and have people actually buy it.
>>
>>My recommendation is take it back and build an Nforce2 based Athlon XP 2800+
>>system. If you'd like to save a little money and get some extra speed, head over
>>to www.newageoc.com. If you don't know how to overclock I can manually 'lock'
>>the chip at 2.4GHz that way you don't need to do anything but drop in the chip
>>and put on the heatsink. :)
>
>Thanks for the advice & info. Very interesting. This 2.6G Celeron box + monitor
>only cost me $650 bottom line on sale at Staples (Compaq Presario S4200NX). I
>still have a few days to take it back. Hard to decide. I may keep it. The
>computer hardware minus monitor/software cost was only about $400. I've been
>looking at alternatives if I want to spend $1000+ but not sure if I do. I kept
>your link. If I do then I may be in touch later.
>WP

You could always pop in a higher speed Pentium 4 chip later on.. but.. you won't
see too much of a difference in what you get now score wise for chess. Other
applications will be quite bit faster though. If you could sell that Celeron
chip and try to get $80 or so for it, you can pitch in another $80 and get a
P4-2.53GHz..



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