Author: David Dory
Date: 23:12:12 05/31/02
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On May 31, 2002 at 23:54:24, ERNIE COLLADO wrote: > >Would someone please tell me which bench mark tests are most relevent in regards >to running chess software. I'm refering to the tests done between the Pentium >and AMD chips. Thank you for your help. It depends on several factors, among them: 1) What chess program are use going to want to use? TSCP, for instance, runs slightly faster on Pentium CPU's than on the "about equal", AMD Athlon. Crafty, however, can be compiled to run faster on "equal" Athlons. If Crafty is NOT re-compiled, however, Athlons are still faster for Crafty, but the margin is much slimmer. 2) If you want to overclock - well, talk to Aaron Gordon (on CCC). He's is the over-clocker from HELL (or is that HEAVEN?) In general, o/c'ing works better on Athlons than on Pentium's, but it's somewhat risky. Not everyone's cup of tea. and every mobo, memory, BIOS system is different! 3) If you don't have a good quality board, memory, BIOS, fans, heatsinks, blah, blah, blah, you shouldn't o/clock. One guy fried his Athlon in 5 seconds. His own error, but that's sobering, IMO. You might even start a fire! In my own test - which I'll send you via email, I have a little Tic-Tac-Toe program with full mini-max, on an somewhat larger TTT board. It fits nicely on a floppy, and I test a lot of computers. The tests correspond well with a full chess program test. In my tests, a 1700+ Athlon with 1Gb of SDRAM, is just slightly better than a Pentium4 at 2GigHrz with any memory type or size. (This program is not effected by nor require a HD, or a large amount of memory.) This appears pretty consistent with other tests I've read on the net, excluding multimedia-intensive stuff (like sound or video editing). Athlon's with DDR ram memory, and using 266 or higher FSB (front side bus), will outdistance a regular P4 with any memory, even more. If the P4 has the newest 533 FSB and memory that best suits that FSB speed, that's another question. I don't have one like that around to test, (yet!) You can read about them a little at: http://developer.intel.com/design/motherbd/845GBoards/index.htm I'm sure the Pentium would do better with this FSB speed and the memory to use it the best. Also, while the Athlons do better with integer speed, the Pentium's are undoubtedly faster with multi-media work. I would guess by 5-15 percent, depending on the exact application. Doing a good benchmark is a REAL can of worms. Unbelievably complex to be "fair". To a Crafty user it's only "fair" to recompile Crafty code for each machine. To a Fritz7 user, it's impossible to recompile the code, so that's not "fair". There are so many driver, BIOS, video and mobo issues, you can't shake a stick at all of them. Even the noise of the fans - especially for the hotter running Athlons. And of course, everyone believes "their" way of testing is the ONLY "fair" way to test, period!! Be ready for "hardware wars", as Slater stated. Some folk are not interested in anything but SPEED, while others want SPEED AND VALUE. Frankly, I like the way my Athlon's case LOOKS (it's all a light grey - even the floppy drive and cdrom drive face). With the current power and stability of today's computers, I'm sure which ever one you choose, you should be well-served. Be sure to do some performance test on your prospective choices before buying. The differences can be large! David
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