Author: Richard A. Fowell (fowell@netcom.com)
Date: 22:34:51 12/12/99
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On December 13, 1999 at 00:46:59, Manuel Leone wrote: >On December 12, 1999 at 17:31:25, Tom Kerrigan wrote: >>Not likely. >> >>The G4 is a very good processor. It's about 20% faster (at computer chess) than >>an equivalently clocked PPro/PII/PIII/Celeron/Athlon. >> >>Unfortunately for Mac users, the fastest G4 available is 450MHz. That translates >>to a ~540MHz Intel processor. That's respectable, but it's still a pretty far >>cry from the 733MHz PIII and 750MHz Athlon. >> >>What's also unfortunate is Apple's marketing strategy of blatently lying to >>consumers. >> >>-Tom >> > > >What chess software did you use to arrive at the 20% speed difference? It's only a guess, but since the TSCP speed benchmarks on Tom's page at: http://ucsu.Colorado.EDU/~kerrigat/bench.html include both G4 data and Pentium data, I'm guessing TSCP. When people compare computer program speeds across processors, the ratio is definitely a function of the program and the compiler. In my HIARCS 7.0 benchmarks, it seems that the HIARCS 7.0 gained more relative benefit from the Mac vs. the PII, about 46%. But it is definitely a function of the chess software. I don't have any G4 numbers for HIARCS, but I would not expect much difference between a G4 and a G3 for HIARCS - it wasn't compiled for Altivec, and even if it were, the Altivec instructions are mainly aimed at helping operations hardly ever used by chess, although one chess programmer has told me there are some Altivec features that might be useful to chess software. Here's my HIARCS 7.0 data. I used a long benchmark to cut down on the statistical noise - it is a several hour benchmark using many positions. HIARCS 7 - with 64Mb Hash (Mac) or 63Mb Hash (PC) Machine CPU MHz CPU Nodes/second nps/MHz Configuration =================================================================== Mac Yosemite 400 MHz 750 53,413 nps 133.5 Sys 8.5.1, 128Mb RAM, G3 Mac Yosemite 350 MHz 750 47,615 nps 136.0 Sys 8.5.1, 128Mb RAM, G3 Mac PowerBook 300 MHz 750 40,062 nps 133.5 Sys 8.5, 192Mb RAM, G3 Mac ??? 310 MHz 750 38,929 nps 125.6 Sys 8.1, accel. card? Pent II /400 400 MHz PII 38,347 nps 95.9 Win 98 "safe mode" (DOS) AMD K6/350 350 MHz K6 35,052 nps 100.1 Win 95, -x 63 Mb hash Mac iMac 233 MHz 750 30,942 nps 132.8 Sys 8.5.1, 96Mb RAM Mac 7300/180 180 MHz 604e 20,567 nps 114.3 Sys 7.5.5, 80Mb RAM Pentium MMX 200 MHz P5? 18,910 nps 94.5 SSDF test machine, 64Mb RAM Mac 6100/ 66 66 MHz 601 4,862 nps 73.7 Sys 7.5 , 72Mb RAM
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