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Subject: Re: Hashtable size: diminishing returns?

Author: Tom Kerrigan

Date: 10:32:06 03/28/00

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On March 28, 2000 at 12:44:58, Bruce Ramsey wrote:

>Do any gurus have comments with respect to how much it matters to commercial
>chess programs to have 133Mhz SDRAM versus 100Mhz SDRAM?

I haven't run any experiments, but my guess is that it doesn't matter at all.
Most chess programs only make a handful of random memory accesses per node
(sometimes less). So memory is definitely not the "bottlenecking" component.

>Do any gurus have comments with respect to a Gateway Pentium versus a Gateway
>Athalon (with respect to the Athalon's reputed 200Mhz bus)?

I don't think the bus speed matters, if it's faster than the RAM speed.
(Assuming single processor.)

>I'd be interested in recommendations as well.  I'm well aware money can be saved
>by building my own system, but I'm not going to.  It's going to be
>Dell/Gateway/Micron/HP/IBM or some other not-bottom-tier system builder, so
>comments from the gurus on such choices would be great.

I don't think you can save very much money by building your own computer
anymore. Around 10 years ago, you could have saved a ton, but these days the
profit margins are pretty small. Another factor is that the big-name vendors get
some pretty sweet deals on components, which they can pass along. Sometimes I
run across people who claim to have saved a lot by building their own computer,
but they almost always used crap components. I build my own computers, but only
because I have half the parts already anyway.

I've had good experience with Micron. I know several people who have had bad
experiences with Dell.

-Tom



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