Author: William Penn
Date: 08:49:23 09/18/03
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On September 18, 2003 at 01:40:11, John Coffey wrote: >I figured out how to run the program without the annoying little animation at >the beginning. > >I can't seem to run more than one copy at the same time like I could with Fritz >6. Going to miss that for doing analysis and playing at the same time. > >Orignally I started with Fritz 4/5/6 and was getting about 450 KN's per second >on a Pentium III 450 mhz. I wanted more power, mostly for chess analysis, so I >upgraded to a Pentium III 933 mhz. The speed didn't exactly double but I was >getting aroudn 750 KN/S. Then I bought Fritz 8 and the KN/S dropped to 450 >again, but sometimes it was much less. I thought that maybe this would be O.K. >since the program was smarter than the previous versions, but this drop in KN/S >prompted me to buy a 2.4 GHZ celeron with an XP O.S. What is surprising is that >the KN/S haven't gone up that much. Right now it is reporting 510 KN/S and I >have seen speeds from 300 to 1200 KN/S, but typically I might see 600 to 700 >KN/S. > >I wonder if there are bug fixes for fritz 8? > >John Coffey The bug is your processor. Celeron 2.4GHz is a lemon, chesswise. I bought one recently at Staples on special sale, a Compaq Presario S4200NX for about $600, enticed by the 2.4GHz "speed". I only found one non-chess benchmark where the 2.4GHz was reflected. But as far as chess analyis goes with the Chessbase systems/engines, my tests indicated that it was "effectively" only about 1GHz relative to earlier processors. Thus, "GHz" really isn't a reliable indicator of processor speed anymore. You have to consider the processor type and how well it works with your particular applications - chess, in our case. I took it back to Staples for a refund within their 14 days allowed time. I then took the big plunge and bought a $498 Compaq Presario S4020WM from Walmart with an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ processor running at 2.0GHz. This one works well with chess software, and it's indeed a true 2.0GHz speed in comparison with earlier processors. It only had 128MB installed RAM, so adding more memory was needed to make it perform comfortably. Also I replaced the slow 40G hard drive with a fast 120G. Now it's a good chess computer system. Incidentally, Walmart has a 15 day return policy on their computers, which is a good thing because the first S4020WM I got from them was a lemon. I had to take it back for exchange. Then the second computer was OK, but the enclosed Compaq 7500 monitor konked out within a few days. Compaq replaced the monitor so things are OK now. Just be prepared to take back new computer equipment that doesn't work right. So, I would suggest that you get an AMD, and forget about Celeron. The older Celerons were OK, but not the new ones. Until just recently, I was using a 500MHz Celeron W98se computer purchased in 1999, and it was a good machine. WP
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