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Subject: Re: Best setting for hash whenn running Crafty??

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 08:19:01 06/13/99

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On June 13, 1999 at 09:25:30, James T. Walker wrote:

>On June 13, 1999 at 00:44:04, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On June 12, 1999 at 21:53:27, Brett Clark wrote:
>>
>>>On June 12, 1999 at 21:30:05, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On June 12, 1999 at 17:24:15, Gustavo Pereira wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>I have a 128M computer. What are the best settings for hash and hashp when
>>>>>running Crafty?
>>>>>
>>>>>Thank you.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>I would use hash=48M, hashp=16M...  assuming you are using windows.  If
>>>>linux, hash=96m, hashp=16m will work fine...
>>>
>>>How about Crafty in the Fritz 5.32 interface.  Any recommendations for hash
>>>table size (and would this vary with the speed of the machine)?
>>
>>
>>No idea... generally bigger is better, until you reach the point where bigger ->
>>paging...  then it kills you...  with crafty, the disk should be quiet during
>>the game (except for endgames if you have tablebases).  If the disk is active,
>>hash is too large and your system is paging.
>
>Since you indicate bigger is better except for paging I'm curious why some other
>programs seem to slow down when using too much RAM for hashing.  Do you have a
>guess about that?
>Jim Walker


Sure... they are looking at the _wrong_ thing.  IE "define slower".  If you mean
NPS drops off a bit, that is normal, because hashing improves move ordering and
as move ordering gets better, nps drops.  But in running a little bit 'slower'
(NPS-wise) you run a good bit "better" because the hash table is improving
move ordering which makes the overall search either (a) a bit faster or (b) a
bit more accurate.    Larger does _not_ hurt crafty until you reach the point
where you start to page.  Then it is a killer because disks are at least 6-7
orders of magnitude slower than memory.

Urban legend is one thing, reality is another.  I often run on ICC with hash=
384M, even though I play lots of bullet/blitz.  I wouldn't do this if I thought
it hurt performance...  I don't always use this so that I can do other things
on the machine without causing paging...



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