royb wrote:
I'm running a Haswell CPU (2015 vintage). I find it hard to believe it is not fast enough.
Well, what FPS did you get? Was it about 100%?
Emulating a different CPU (especially a quite powerful one like the M680x0) is a rather hard task - every single CPU microcode instruction must be translated to several commands of the host CPU, so there's of course a limit for the emulation speed.
And the 50% speed is FASTER than the 100% speed? That doesn't make sense to me.
You certainly know that almost all chess computers or programs use a random generator, else they would always produce exactly the same moves.
So if you look at your test conditions ...
Opening book: off
Level: 07 ply
From the opening position, I timed how long for the system to make a move (Nf3 in this case is the move selected though that's not important)
... can't you imagine that THIS might be the reason for the different results (which seem to look strange for you)?
But even IF there really problems with different emulations speeds, then the reason would be the underlying emulation system MESS, and you should contact the MESS developers - I'm not responsible for this MESS system, I just implemented and/or improved the chess modules.
Franz