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A question about the best hardware for chess today
Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 10:18 pm
by Uri Blass
A correspondence player that I know think of buying a new hardware and wonder what is the best hardware that he can buy.
If there is some table of speed of rybka in nodes per seconds in some chess positions for different prices of hardware then it may be productive.
Uri
Re: A question about the best hardware for chess today
Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 10:54 pm
by Sean Evans
At the 2009 WCCC Rybka used Intel Xeon W5580 @ 3.2GHz x 8. Obviously, the owner of the program would take the best hardware for his program. If he wants to save money he can buy the Intel Core i7.
http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/t ... php?id=192
http://www.shopbot.ca/pp-intel-xeon-w55 ... 20163.html
http://www.shopbot.ca/default.asp?kw=In ... ion=search
Re: A question about the best hardware for chess today
Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 11:10 pm
by Sean Evans
Re: A question about the best hardware for chess today
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 12:31 am
by bob
Uri Blass wrote:A correspondence player that I know think of buying a new hardware and wonder what is the best hardware that he can buy.
If there is some table of speed of rybka in nodes per seconds in some chess positions for different prices of hardware then it may be productive.
Uri
Fastest I7 (Intel) processor he can find, with the most cores he can afford.
Re: A question about the best hardware for chess today
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 2:39 am
by jdart
It is questionable whether the absolute fastest machine is really necessary. You can pay an awful lot for the last 10-20% increment in performance.
That said, he might consider a 2xquad Xeon server class machine like this:
http://polywell.com/us/servers/PolyServer5520A18.asp
Dell has similar stuff but it seems to run $5K and up.
I understand some correspondence players like to run multiple engines so another thing to consider is getting a couple quad machines instead (which are a lot cheaper). But if you want max performance on 1 box an 8-core is the way to go I think. Of course in a few years that will seem puny.
--Jon
Re: A question about the best hardware for chess today
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 3:44 pm
by Sean Evans
bob wrote: Fastest I7 (Intel) processor he can find, with the most cores he can afford.
Bob, would you prefer Crafty to run on an Intel i7 OR Intel Xeon W5580 @ 3.2GHz
Re: A question about the best hardware for chess today
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 4:24 pm
by zullil
Fastest I7 (Intel) processor he can find, with the most cores he can afford.
My employer just provided me with a Mac Pro that has two E5520 chips (2.26GHz, quad core, 45nm). Thus I have eight cores available.
I compiled Crafty-23.0 from source using the latest icc for Mac OSX, employing pgo.
Here's what I got:
Code: Select all
LZsMacPro: ~/Documents/Chess/Crafty/Crafty-23.0] ./crafty-23.0
max threads set to 8.
EGTB access enabled
using tbpath=/Users/louis/Documents/Chess/Crafty/TB
5 piece tablebase files found
14043kb of RAM used for TB indices and decompression tables
EGTB cache memory = 256M bytes.
hash table memory = 3072M bytes.
pawn hash table memory = 512M bytes.
choose from book moves randomly (using weights.)
choose from 5 best moves.
pondering enabled.
Audio output enabled
game/10 minutes primary time control
Crafty v23.0 (8 cpus)
White(1): bench
Running benchmark. . .
......
Total nodes: 130877509
Raw nodes per second: 17403924
Total elapsed time: 7.52
White(1):
White(1): quit
How does this compare to your 8-core box? Thanks.
Re: A question about the best hardware for chess today
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 11:40 pm
by bob
Sean Evans wrote:bob wrote: Fastest I7 (Intel) processor he can find, with the most cores he can afford.
Bob, would you prefer Crafty to run on an Intel i7 OR Intel Xeon W5580 @ 3.2GHz
I'd take the quad-core i7, currently at about the same speed clock-wise. When the xeon-MP version comes out later this year, it won't be long until we see 4 socket 32 core machines that will be beyond fast.
Re: A question about the best hardware for chess today
Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 11:45 pm
by bob
I get this on my two-year-old 8-core cluster nodes:
Code: Select all
max threads set to 8.
White(1): bench
Running benchmark. . .
......
Total nodes: 117288772
Raw nodes per second: 15037022
Total elapsed time: 7.80
Re: A question about the best hardware for chess today
Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 10:38 pm
by tano-urayoan
bob wrote:Sean Evans wrote:bob wrote: Fastest I7 (Intel) processor he can find, with the most cores he can afford.
Bob, would you prefer Crafty to run on an Intel i7 OR Intel Xeon W5580 @ 3.2GHz
I'd take the quad-core i7, currently at about the same speed clock-wise. When the xeon-MP version comes out later this year, it won't be long until we see 4 socket 32 core machines that will be beyond fast.
Hello Dr. Hyatt.
Which will be your selection, quad i7 or a dual W5580 system?