Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 20:04:37 03/04/99
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On March 04, 1999 at 19:22:50, Mark Ryan wrote: >Greetings: obviously speed is important in computer chess. Please keep us all >up to date on your knowledge of the fastest available PCs. Your input is >valuable, and we are reading it all with great interest. > >Thanks, >Mark > > > I think that the PIII, for a while, is not going to be real interesting for chess programs. the extra 50mhz is not real noticable... and the new hardware instructions are not being used in any chess engines so far. So you can expect a nominal improvement based on the clock frequency, but nothing else. Maybe when MSVC 7 comes out, it will produce the new instructions when they can be useful and we might see more performance. At present, the PII/450 has to be the best deal. Or the Celeron at 450... > >On March 04, 1999 at 03:28:08, Baldomero Garcia, Jr. wrote: > >>I saw at the Computer Shopper site that the new Pentium III 500 Mhz machines >>were available now. >>I was wondering how much faster they were compared to the PII 450 Mhz. I >>visited the Byte Online >>web site, and basically, the answer was that in some cases, the PIII 500 were >>20% faster (which is >>significant), while in some others the PII 450 were actually faster. So, I >>guess if you're looking for >>a faster processor for your computer programs, it'd be best to wait for a faster >>computer if you already >>have a PII 450. Not only that, considering the price drop of PII 450's, that >>would be a better buy if >>you have something slower. >> >>I also looked at the Macintosh side of the house. I'm not a big fan of >>Macintosh, even though I own one. >>Apparently, Apple brags that the new G3 400 Mhz is faster than the PII 450 Mhz, >>at least in the integer >>test conducted by Byte magazine. The problem is, there are not a lot of >>computer chess programs available >>for the Mac. I think HIARCS is the only commercial one, while Mac Chess 5.0 and >>Crafty (Mac version) >>are available as freeware. I'm not sure how strong Chessmaster 4000 for the Mac >>is. >> >>In any case, it'd be interesting to see the rating lists from the SSDF include >>faster processors than the aging >>P200. Of course, money is the big issue in upgrading computers, and I'm not >>sure when we should expect >>the upgrades to happen.
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