TalkChess.com

[Ed Schroder]

I am planning to write a couple of technical pages for starting programmers. One is already finished and posted here, The value of an evaluation function, currently in progress is a study about depth and diminishing returns.

I also want to write something about a good testing methodology for the average chess programmer who has only 1 or 2 quads. I am a newbie myself here, in my active days playing thousands of games on Pentium 90 / 266 / 450 was not an option and so I can use some advice. Two questions:

1. Say you play 1/1 games on a quad then how many threads can you start? When you use 4 threads are the timings still reliable with all the interventions of the OS? Or is it just better to use 3 threads?

2. Is there something like an increasing reliability when you increase the time control? An example:

Playing 5000 1/all games is as reliable as 2500 5/all games ?