mjlef wrote:Kai,
How can both hyperthreading on and off be tested? Was this two identical machines or on 1 machine? I ask since I see a different nps with hyperthreading being off and using the half the thread, than hyperthreading on using half the threads. So I do not see how it can be tested on one machine.
If two identical machines could be setup and connected, one with hyperthreading on and one off, then that would rule out the issue. But nodes per second does not seem to be enough.
Mark
For NPS it's straightforward without switching HT off in BIOS. For example, for 4 cores, 8 threads, start a command prompt inside the folder of Komodo and type:
Start /affinity 55 Komodo.exe
55 is the hexadecimal representation of 01010101 (from core 7 to 0), i.e. physical cores 0, 2, 4, 6.
For matches I do a little sloppy job: in Cutechess-Cli with "restart=off" switch, I set the affinities by hand in task manager at the beginning of the match. If I need 4 threads on 4 physical cores, I leave only 0,2,4,6 checked. If I need 8 threads on 8 logical cores, I leave all checked. It can be done separately for each running engine.
I didn't notice significant differences using affinities to physical cores and switching HT off in the BIOS in Fritz Benchmark or NPS.