Author: Wayne Lowrance
Date: 22:41:33 11/29/99
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On November 30, 1999 at 00:03:18, Jeremiah Penery wrote: >On November 29, 1999 at 23:08:30, Dennis A. Bourgerie wrote: > >>I am thinking about buying a notebook computer. There are different kinds of >>processors on the market, for example, Celeron, K6-2, K6-3, Pentium, Pentium II, >>Pentium III. I would like to get a notebook that can efficiently run Rebel 10 >>or Fritz or other chess programs. >> My question is: If the processors were to be ranked from best to worst how >>would the list go? Also what other factors (maybe RAM or secondary cache) are >>the most important for getting good results from a chess program? > >I will try to rank these: Celeron, PII, Pentium (MMX), PIII, K6-2, K6-3, Athlon >(K7). In general performance (speed/MHz), it might go something like: Pentium, >K6-2, K6-3/Celeron/PII, PIII (Katmai), Athlon/PIII (Coppermine). > >I'm not too sure about the position of the AMD processors above (except the >Athlon). Many chess programs seem to favor them over the Intel chips, but some >others dislike them. Supposedly they're also a bit flaky, especially when >overclocked. > >The reason there are two different PIIIs is that Intel switched to a new .18 >micron fabrication, which improves speed and reduces the die size. They also >made the cache speedier and put, I think, 256k directly on the die. Pure CPU >performance of the Coppermine chips over the older PIIIs is something like 40% >greater, for the same MHz. (I.e., a 600MHz PIII Katmai is up to 40% slower than >a 600MHz PIII Coppermine in pure CPU performance.) This is why they are now >about equal with the Athlon in performance, where they lagged behind just >recently. > >The Celeron has less L2 cache than the PII, but the cache runs at full core >speed, rather than half that. For some programs, this can actually cause them >to run faster on the Celeron. In general, though, the Celeron is just slightly >slower than the PII. One advantage is that Celerons (at least older ones) could >very easily and safely be overclocked greatly. > >As far as other factors that affect a chess program: RAM is very important. >Hash table size does have some affect on the strength of the program, however >small. Some programs also seem to use the hash table better than others. >Crafty, for example, performs very similarly with anywhere from 4MB to 384MB of >hash tables - the size doesn't seem to affect it very much, as long as it's >above some threshhold (I don't remember what the threshhold was, but it was >pretty small.) Other programs, like Fritz, seem to depend on getting hash >tables as big as possible. >But in ANY system, the more RAM the better. > >There really isn't much else that affects a chess program. RAM and processor >speed are the only major factors in determining strength, but other things will >also help very slightly. A decent video card is always good. For those >programs with all the 3D graphics, it will take some load off the CPU - More CPU >time for the chess engine. A fast hard drive can also help, especially if you >have TBs being accessed or something. There, a slow hard drive can kill you. >Otherwise, it probably won't matter much. Try as hard as I can, I do not understand a numberical rating opinion from your description. Try a 1, 2 ,3 .....etc listing. Wayne
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