I have been thinking of buying a real computer in the future and if i
do should i spend more money for extra memory or speed or both ? Which
one would make HIRCS or RYBEKA or FRITZ for example play at there
strongest level.
I belive most computers are duel core ?
If i get a computer id want to play other computers chess programs and
id want mine to play at it's strongest so i would not lose all the
time..ha ha.....

Thanks for the info.....

SAT W-7 wrote:
If i get a computer id want to play other computers chess programs

But... why? I could understand this if you were going to write your
own chess program but what's the thrill in buying a computer and a
chess program and getting it to play against other bought computers
running other bought chess programs? Where does the feeling of
personal satisfaction come from?


Dave.

--
David Richerby Sadistic Strange Umbrella (TM): it's
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ like an umbrella but it's totally
weird and it wants to hurt you!

"SAT W-7" wrote in message
...
I have been thinking of buying a real computer in the future and if i
do should i spend more money for extra memory or speed or both ? Which

Both, if you can afford it... (grin.)

If you get a core 2 duo (or quad) with a large cache, the chess program will
mostly fit into the cache itself, using main memory only for the trans
table.

So any increase in the clock speed would be strongly passed on to the chess
program itself. A larger trans table helps but beyond a couple gig, I don't
think it'd increase as much.

one would make HIRCS or RYBEKA or FRITZ for example play at there
strongest level.
I belive most computers are duel core ?

Yup. No point in buying anything that isn't. (Unless you need a laptop
with great battery life, and even then the dual core processors often have
better power management and still last longer. Even a 1.9ghz Turion x2
based laptop has better battery life than the same speed single core celeron
found in cheapie laptops.)

Hyatt and just about everybody else in the computer chess world recommends a
good 64 bit core 2 duo (or quad) with a large L2 cache (I think the higher
end ones have 4m of L2 cache), running a good 64 bit OS. (Assuming the
programs you want to run are 64 bit, of course...)

But a good Athlon / Turion X2 has pretty good performance too and can be
quite a bit cheaper.

I'd suggest WinXP64 except for the not so minor fact that finding drivers
for it can be quite difficult. A lot of manufacturers of the systems and
the parts just don't provide the drivers.

That leaves Linux or Vista64.

If i get a computer id want to play other computers chess programs and
id want mine to play at it's strongest so i would not lose all the
time..ha ha.....

If that's what you want to do, then you'll need two computers.

You simply can't get reliable test results with both programs running on the
same system.

Let me explain a bit... You can do it for casual testing if you turn off
pondering and limit the size of the trans table, etc. But if you are doing
serious testing, you need those enabled and running two chess programs at
the same time would interfere with each other.


Let me also point out a few realities about testing programs...

It can take a *lot* of games before you can get reliable results. Some
people talk about thousands of games!

I'd suggest at least a hundred, though.

From what I hear, if you reduce the time controls, you can still get
statistically valid results in the ordering of the programs. Meaning you
can say which is stronger than the others, but you can't say how strong they
are.

Even reduced all the way down to 10 seconds a move is supposed to be
statistically comparable to a regular time control tournament between
programs.

And since you need to play so many games, and you are doing this for casual
testing, you can run both programs on the same system. Just turn off the
pondering and limit the trans tables enough so that both fit easily into
your available phyiscal memory.

And since you need to play so many programs against themselves, you can get
two cheaper systems, still do 10 seconds a move, run a game on each system.
For the price of a really fast system, you can get one that runs only a
little slower for half the price. So you can get two fast systems for the
price of one very fast system.





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Thank you for all that information..
will be back to write a little more later..
in a day or so..just hitting going to bed now.

Personal satisfaction , just competition ....I am not a good enough
chess player to make my own program + i am not smart enough to make a
program....
Years ago my mom bought me a chess computer and then a few years
later my friends mom bought him a chess computer..So we had to play
computer vs computer ...I said lets bet a dollar and we played level one
vs level one and i lost...#$%^&*()....
So if i get a real computer and you have a computer and we both have
HIRCS , and we played will we draw every game ? Just because we have
the same program does not mean we will draw every game..There has to be
a reason your program beats me or mine beats yours and i belive it is
the computer you have....
I am just thinking of getting a real computer for other things too
but i was just asking what it takes to make a chess program to play
strong.
after reading the one response i am not sure i can afford it ? I am
thinking about a desk top computer .....The one main reason i have not
bought one yet is because my webtv is so simple and easy to use...It
never gets viruses and never crashes .......

By the way i took my friends computer chess home and it turns out that
his level one was like my level 3 .....They had a few draws.......

I have my IVAN chess computer and it is around I700 + ELO and it is
under I800 ELO.
I played it twice vs FRITZ as black and white and Ivan lost both games
BUT i was still excited about watching them play ....

SAT W-7 wrote:
Personal satisfaction , just competition ....

I think that was my question -- where is the personal satisfaction in
an enterprise where your only personal involvement is the injection of
cash and the only possible reward is to see your pile of money beat
somebody else's pile of money. Anyway, don't mind me -- it's your
life and all that. :-)

So if i get a real computer and you have a computer and we both
have HIRCS, and we played will we draw every game ? Just because we
have the same program does not mean we will draw every game..There
has to be a reason your program beats me or mine beats yours and i
belive it is the computer you have....

The game won't be drawn every time, no. If your computer were to
consistently beat mine, that would be because of a performance gap
that let your computer analyze slightly deeper than mine. On the
other hand, even between computers of exactly equal performance, there
will still be some decisive games. There are a number of possible
reasons for this:

1) one player had what seems to be the advantage of playing white;
2) one player randomly chose an opening leading to a position that was
sufficiently imbalanced to let the other side win;
3) one player randomly got slightly more time to analyze a position
and just happened to see the refutation to a move.

Essentially, every time player A makes a move, player B gets to see a
little bit further in making his reply than A was able to see when
deciding his move. If player A is lucky, seeing further ahead will
make his move look better than it did when he played it; if he's
unlucky, B will find a better response than A was bargaining for. If,
eventually, one of the players gets unlucky enough to make a move that
looks good at one depth but is refuted by a quiet move at a greater
depth, that player may end up losing the game.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Impossible Indelible Peanut (TM):
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ it's like a roasted nut but it can't
be erased and it can't exist!

I think people bet all the time , Vegas , Reno , ect ect...People get
personal satisfaction from that ...
I rarely bet and when i do it is very small amounts....

You answered my question about one computer mite see a little father
into the program and mite win because of that..
That would give me satisfaction .....+ i like the competition , i like
watching two computer chess programs fighting each other...

I have no illusions that i could write a program myself + i do not have
the time..I enjoy the hard work other people have done and they would
get the satisfaction from me with the money i would pay for their
program..

I would be a vegetarian if i had to kill my own meat and seafood , so i
appreciate the people who can kill animals because i like eating pigs
and cows and chickens and fish.....

Hey do you have a chess program ? If you do want to play my IVAN chess
computer ?
ELO range is I700 + BUT under I800...

On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 05:43:16 -0800, (SAT W-7) wrote:

I have been thinking of buying a real computer in the future and if i
do should i spend more money for extra memory or speed or both ? Which
one would make HIRCS or RYBEKA or FRITZ for example play at there
strongest level.
I belive most computers are duel core ?
If i get a computer id want to play other computers chess programs and
id want mine to play at it's strongest so i would not lose all the
time..ha ha.....

Thanks for the info.....

Take a look at this posting in another computer chess forum:

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewt...140073&t=15997

He's getting some pretty impressive nodes per second out of Rybka for
a $500 investment. He'd get even better numbers with a 64 bit OS and
engine.

Tony