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Subject: Re: In doubts with gandalf

Author: jonas cohonas

Date: 16:09:13 02/23/01

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On February 23, 2001 at 18:07:12, Pete Galati wrote:

>On February 23, 2001 at 17:54:33, Fernando Villegas wrote:
>
>>I wonder how it can be that gandalf get such good results in the tourn. My
>>personal experience with it is somewhat disappointing.  Could it be that?
>>a) Running at the faster hardware as it uses in there works dramatically better
>>than in my 500 Mhz machine?
>
>Posible.
>
>>b) or that his indifferent style againts human make it good againts computers?
>
>Actually, Gandalf doesn't do amazingly well in several of the Winboard
>tournaments that people have used it in.  How can that be explained if it's
>doing so well at the tornament?
>
>>c) or that they are running a far better version that my G version?
>
>It WOULD be different.  But far better?  Would that mean that the next Gandalf
>upgrade will knock your socks off?
>
>>Who have the answer to my question?
>>Fernando
>
>I can't.
>
>Pete

I have tested Gandalf_432f-* now since it was available at gambitsoft. I started
out on a 500mhz amd k6-2 where Gandalf did allright, but not spectacular
i then moved on to a T-Bird 900 mhz where Gandalf accelerated in strenght and
benefitted more from processing power than say Fritz 6 and JR6 i then upgraded
my cpu once again to a T-Bird 1.2ghz and along with the improved versions of
Gandalf, the strenght increased even more to the point it was as good and better
than F6 and JR6 depending on the timecontrols. And my latest cpu upgrade was
overclocking my T-Bird 1.2ghz to 1.3 ghz which boast a 300-400 kN/s(in the
opening, and middlegame) performance by Gandalf which is about 10 times the
speed i got on my amd 500mhz amd k6-2 where Fritz 6 "only" got a speedup
of about 5-6 times from 500mhz - 1.3ghz. In the late middlegame and the endgame
i get a nodecount of 500-1000 kN/s with Gandalf, which is even more than 10
times the nodecount i get on my amd 500mhz. Now Gandalf running on 1.3ghz it is
better than Fritz and Junior at long timecontrols, as good as Fritz in blitz and
better than junior in blitz!
In conclusion, to get the most out of Gandalf you will have to run it on a
fairly fast system, and very important is to let the book.lrn file grow to
atleast 500kb before you will see the true strenght of Gandalf, i have read a
lot of posts with people complaining that Gandalf was a weak program after 20
games of testing, the book.lrn feature IMO is there to get Gandalf into openings
that compliments its playing style and unless the book.lrn file is
"experienced" enough to ensure that, you will not see the great play everybody
is talking about, on a consistant level.

Regards
Jonas



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