Running chess programs in Windows 7 beta

[kgburcham]

"The Windows 7 Beta only supports Windows Vista SP1 to Windows 7 upgrades".
I will play with Windows 7 beta for the next few weeks.
So far I do not have a speed increase using Windows 7 beta.
kgburcham

All tests in Shredder 11 interface
Hash 1024
[D] rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq -


Windows XP PRO x64

Rybka 3.1
18.01 2:02 145kns

Zappa Mexico II
17/52 2:37 1757 kns

Deep Sjeng 3.0
20/50 1:50 3958 kns


Windows 7 ultimate x64 beta

Rybka 3.1
18.01 2:00 142 kns

Zappa Mexico II
17/53 2:00 1756 kns

Deep Sjeng 3.0
20/46 2:00 3947 kns


Chessbase

When trying to run Chessbase Hiarcs I get this error:

The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more detail.

http://rant.blackapache.net/2008/05/17/ ... on-issues/

[trojanfoe]

Is it supposed to be faster than Windows XP? I have just installed it under VMWare, so as not to lose my main machine, but that means I cannot get idea about performance, only features. I think it looks very slick and if they get the performance of Windows XP it will be very popular indeed.

Cheers,
Andy

[mclane]

maybe one should better wait until the bug fixes have reached a certain perfection.

[pavel]

"The Windows 7 Beta only supports Windows Vista SP1 to Windows 7 upgrades".
I will play with Windows 7 beta for the next few weeks.
So far I do not have a speed increase using Windows 7 beta.
kgburcham

I don't know why you think there should be a speed increase for chess engine with windows 7 ?

I have been trying out w7 for the last 24hours or so and while the application response time, boot up and shut down time are impressive, they are all related to OS performance. The memory management and filesystem is still the same and there is no reason to believe that system hogging applications like Photoshop CS4 and video editing applications or even chess programs performance will be significantly faster, if faster at all.

Unless there are provisions for W7-specific compiled binaries for performance increase, and I don't know of any such thing.

[pavel]

Is it supposed to be faster than Windows XP? I have just installed it under VMWare, so as not to lose my main machine, but that means I cannot get idea about performance, only features. I think it looks very slick and if they get the performance of Windows XP it will be very popular indeed.

Cheers,
Andy

On a multi-core system and performance increase is very noticeable. Make a small disk partition (20gb or so ) and install W7 on it, it will not interfere or remove your main system. When you boot up you will have an option to choose your OS.

[trojanfoe]

Is it supposed to be faster than Windows XP? I have just installed it under VMWare, so as not to lose my main machine, but that means I cannot get idea about performance, only features. I think it looks very slick and if they get the performance of Windows XP it will be very popular indeed.

Cheers,
Andy

On a multi-core system and performance increase is very noticeable. Make a small disk partition (20gb or so ) and install W7 on it, it will not interfere or remove your main system. When you boot up you will have an option to choose your OS.

I know and if my wife wasn't such a keen computer/internet user I would have simply replaced Vista with Windows 7 and be done with it. As it stands I have to justify system changes in order that I don't cause service outages. It's like being at work, but without the respect you'd expect in the work place

I like the idea though and I do have a second drive not doing very much at all... hmmmm.

Cheers,
Andy

[mclane]

beside the fact that i was so far not succesful in downloading it,
what is the advantage of windows 7 ? that it is faster ?

[trojanfoe]

beside the fact that i was so far not succesful in downloading it,
what is the advantage of windows 7 ? that it is faster ?

It is supposed to be yes. I have to say it's also cleaner looking too, which is a good thing. Other than that it's the new kid on the block so worth having a look at.

Cheers,
Andy

[pavel]

beside the fact that i was so far not succesful in downloading it,
what is the advantage of windows 7 ? that it is faster ?

According to the official W7 blog (I don't have a link) it is supposed to be approx. 35% faster than vista. It surely feels that way.

Other things of importance might be:

- Popular non-ms video codecs like DivX are installed by default with media player.
- New taskbar which handles open applications a whole lot differently than any previous version of Windows. Takes a little bit getting used to, but definitely better IMO.
- boot-up/restart is faster.
- As a web-developer/designer one thing that is important to me is that IE8, which comes with W7, is not only insanely fast (... and I hate IE in general) but also more standard compliant that any other IE. Which means, no more site designs specifically for IE.
- Moving larger chunks of files are faster.

Just initial first impressions.

In one of my post at CTF I provided link for direct download of W7 beta from Microsoft site.

EDIT: Here are the links.

You can download from their windows 7 page, you might have to register:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window ... nload.aspx

Or... here is the direct link to the ISO from MS site...

ISO for Windows 7 Beta 32-bit (English):
7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso

ISO for Windows 7 Beta
64-bit (English):
7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.ISO

[Nick C]

Why should you? kNPS is determined by machine speed, it has nothing to do with OS.

That's not 100% correct. For example, if I run Rybka with a 2GB hash table on Windows XP I get 20% fewer kN/s than if I run Rybka with a 2GB hash table on Ubuntu Linux using large (2mb) pages rather than the 4k page size used on Windows for Rybka. As far as I am concerned, until such time that Rybka can use large pages on Windows, this improvement has everything to do with the OS!