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Subject: Re: Since the CPU is what really count for Chess !

Author: Matt Taylor

Date: 09:29:06 03/18/03

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On March 18, 2003 at 10:04:56, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On March 18, 2003 at 07:38:39, Matt Taylor wrote:
>
>>On March 18, 2003 at 00:01:44, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On March 17, 2003 at 22:59:30, Aaron Gordon wrote:
>>>
>>>>On March 17, 2003 at 18:47:27, Eugene Nalimov wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>I just run the experiment. I used 2 otherwise identical 64-bit systems, one with
>>>>>3Mb of L3 cache, other with 1.5Mb. Machine with bigger cache run Crafty's
>>>>>"bench" comman 12% faster (1 CPU).
>>>>>
>>>>>That means that
>>>>>(1) Crafty's working set don't fit into 1.5Mb,
>>>>>(2) For systems with cache 1.5Mb or less (i.e. for almost all x86 systems) for
>>>>>Crafty memory speed matter.
>>>>>
>>>>>Thanks,
>>>>>Eugene
>>>>
>>>>Those types of systems aren't what people normally use. Most people here have a
>>>>Pentium 3, Athlon, Pentium 4, etc. Here is something I found with Crafty.
>>>>
>>>>Using the Nforce2 chipset I'm able to run the ram at speeds from 50% up to 200%
>>>>(100% being synchronous) of the fsb speed. I tested 200MHz FSB (400DDR) with
>>>>200MHz memory (400DDR) and 200fsb with 100MHz memory (200DDR).
>>>>The difference between ~1.6gb/s memory and ~3.2gb/s memory with craftys 'bench'
>>>>command was 0.14%. Yes, about one seventh of one percent.
>>>
>>>That might well suggest _another_ bottleneck in that particular machine....
>>
>>What would that be?
>>
>>I ran a similar test on my AthlonXP 2500 w/nForce 2 chipset. Running the memory
>>bus at 100 MHz or 133 MHz didn't make a significant difference in nps. The
>>processor scored around 1.12 MN/s, and it scored some 20-30 KN/s more with a 133
>>MHz memory bus. The FSB was 166 MHz in both cases.
>>
>>-Matt
>
>Were I guessing, I would guess the following:
>
>1.  no interleaving, which means that the raw memory latency is stuck at
>120+ns and stays there.  Faster bus means nothing without interleaving,
>if latency is the problem.
>
>2.  Crafty is dependent mainly on latency although it does a lot of reads
>as well.  But if latench is the bottleneck, then a faster bus is not going
>to help except for whatever boost it gets from tricks used to load a cache
>line faster by streaming in data.
>
>
>When a chipset really interleaves, the first reference cycle is going to
>be whatever memory latency demands, but successive cycles will be faster,
>as 8 byte chunks come in one bus cycle later which makes every 32 bytes
>fetched faster with than without interleaving.

You can't interleave with 1 DIMM. (I know I didn't mention that.)

I'll give it a whirl later today. I finally got that machine set up with Linux.
The hard disk stopped working as a master drive, then LILO refused to install to
the MBR (related to the former I think), and blah...well, it works now. I'll
mess around with the CAS and memory bus settings and post some numbers.

-Matt



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