Author: O. Veli
Date: 07:18:21 04/08/00
I plan on updating my Sapphire II this summer and would like to have some information on my choices. My first choice is the upcoming Novag Star Sapphire which is rumored to be 200 points stronger than Sapphire II. 200 Elo improvement sounds nice but I have some doubts on that. Even if they manage 100 points, it would be rated above 2200 SSDF. 300 USD is a lot for that machine, the current price of 200 USD will make it much more attractive. Of course Novag went out of bussines, but the new company hopefully will make the Star Sapphire. My second choice is to buy a Palm and Chess Genius. Genius is, if I remember correctly, the Roma program rated 1970 by SSDF and ranked 131st on their list. Other programs by Mephisto on the 68000 processor are Vancouver, Lyon and Almeria, all stronger than the Roma program. I assume these are not Mr. Lang's programs, since he would have used them instead of the Roma program in the first place. So the software part will not improve drastically in the near future. I think that the Palm uses the 68000 processor or some new version of it. How often do the Palm processors update? Are they like the Intel processor or does it take longer for a new Palm processor to come to the market? Is there any information on an upcoming Palm processor that would make the Genius program closer to Sapphire II? Roma on 68020 is rated 2030, still below than Sapphire II's 2112. I assume there is not going to a big change in the hardware part either in the Palm + Genius choice. Palm + Genius makes more sense since you can use the Palm for other stuff, but I am interested purely in the strength of the chess program. I am sure in the future a Palm + Genius will be stronger than a hardware solution such as Sapphire, but when I have no idea. I am leaned towards the Star Sapphire but am very interested in your comments. Thank you for taking time to read this somewhat long post.
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