Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 14:27:15 05/14/01
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On May 14, 2001 at 16:32:13, Edward Seid wrote: >Which PC characteristic limits playing strength more: >- CPU speed > - at same clock speed, which is preferred... AMD or Intel? About the same, but AMD looks good at mips/dollar. Multiple CPU systems are worth considering. >- speed of RAM > - PC100/133 vs PC1600/2100 DDR DDR is nice, but so new it squeeks. Price is dropping but I would want to talk to someone with a system that has been working for a few months before I bought one. >- amount of RAM > - as it relates to hashtable size? The more the merrier. 512 megs is cheap. A gig is not prohibitively expensive. >- Windows 95/98/me vs Windows NT/2000 vs (insert OS here) Avoid ME like the plague that it is. I like Windows 2000. >- number of CPUs The more the merrier. Just consider mips/dollar. You should be aware that having an 8 CPU system will be incredibly expensive, and it won't blast everyone out of the water. Double CPU speed and you gain 50 ELO. So if you can run 7 times faster, you have added 350 ELO, which is a lot but not insurmountable. Also, in 5 years or so it will be the same horsepower as a single CPU system of that time frame. >Within each class, how much performance difference is noticed, ie DDR2100 over >PC133 RAM, single cpu vs dual cpu? Dual CPU will not be quite as good as doubling the frequency, because there is some SMP loss. Probably less than 30% can be counted on even for systems with a pile of CPU's. [also important is the fact that some chess programs don't run on multiple CPU's yet, but I think they all will withing 2 years] The extra speed of the ram will vary also by how much ram is available. At some point, you will just cause another bottleneck to surface, because of the exponential nature of chess. So a terrabyte of ram probably won't add a whole lot over 2 gigabytes. Personally, I would try to keep the cost reasonable. If you outlay some huge chunk of change (say $10,000.00) then you will probably be sorry 5 years from now when your $10,000 machine is no faster than a single 64 bit chip machine that costs $1000. For less than $3000 you should be able to get a dual CPU machine that plays awesome chess and won't kill your emotions when it drops into worthlessness. >Trying to design my next killer machine. Thanks in advance. > >ed seid
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