Author: Amir Ban
Date: 12:27:36 09/30/98
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On September 30, 1998 at 05:36:03, Alessio Iacovoni wrote: >I have Fritz 16 bit and Hiarcs 16 bit. There is a great fuss around the 32 bit >version and the wonders it will offer. Now.. since it will not be compatible to >Hiarcs 16 engine I will not *ever* buy it... But the question I wanted to ask >the list is of a more general sort: these engines (Crafty, Fritz, the so called >"fast" ones but also the more positiona ones) rely heavily on the hardware >supported.. so in terms of playing strength, is it worthwile to buy a new engine >that is say 50 points stronger than the preceeding one? couldn't the same >strength improvement be achieved with a hardare upgrade that would have the >added bonus of raising the performace of windows and other programs as well. > >So the question is: why bother and buy the latest engine when the one you >already have could be just as strong with some minor harware improvements (say >+16 or +32meg of memory to increase hash tables). > >Also I have a doubt? Is the overall elo increase of SSDF lists due to better >hardare adopted in testing or to just software improvements? What's your >opinion? First, it's not true that you can get big engine strength improvements (of about 50 points as you say) from minor hardware enhancement. Contrary to what you may have heard, doubling of hash memory will give you 2-3 points improvement, and that may be optimistic already. To get a 50 point improvement, you need doubling of CPU, roughly. The technology advance for this happens, on average, once in 18 months, and costs $500-$1000 for the upgrade. Software costs much less, and if it's available right now, what's the point of waiting for hardware to improve ? My estimate is that roughly half of the strength improvement of the top programs is due to software, and half to hardware. Amir
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