High end PC can't beat lousy Galaxy A7 (2017)

[Patishi]

Hi,
My PC specs:
CPU: intel i9 10900K (10 cores @4.9ghz)
RAM: Gskill TridentZ 32gb (2x16gb) 3600mhz cl16
SSD: 1TB Samsung 970 EVO plus (nvme)
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Master

I do 10 minutes blitz games between the PC and the A7 (Droidfish - Stockfish + NNUE).
on the PC I use fully updated Fritz17 GUI running differnt engines: Stockfish 12 (BMI2/ AVX2 + NNUE), Stockfish 10 (no NNUE), Komodo 14, Dragon (NNUE + AVX2)...I give them at least 8gb of Hash. I use Fritz17 built in opening book. I also tried using syzygy but it doesn't change much.

Just to put things into perspective, The Galaxy A7 has only 8 (small) cores running at 1.9ghz max (I'm not even sure if it even reaches this speed the entire time), and I don't think the IPC even comes close to intel desktop CPU. Also the RAM is probably much slower on the smartphone and less quantity of it. I know the Droidfish app uses only 64mb of hash, and has very limited opening book (maybe 3 or 4 moves before starts to think).
Heck.. I am not even sure the Smartphone is even 64bit LOL!

The PC version is not only 64bit but uses BMI2 and AVX2 versions for all the engines!

So with all those hardware benefits, it still can't beat the little A7 Smartphone. It always ends up in a Draw! not even a hint of an edge (well..maybe sometimes, but it disappears very fast).

What is the explanation? Doesn't the hardware worth anything?

[Guenther]

Hi,
My PC specs:
CPU: intel i9 10900K (10 cores @4.9ghz)
RAM: Gskill TridentZ 32gb (2x16gb) 3600mhz cl16
SSD: 1TB Samsung 970 EVO plus (nvme)
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Master

I do 10 minutes blitz games between the PC and the A7 (Droidfish - Stockfish + NNUE).
on the PC I use fully updated Fritz17 GUI running differnt engines: Stockfish 12 (BMI2/ AVX2 + NNUE), Stockfish 10 (no NNUE), Komodo 14, Dragon (NNUE + AVX2)...I give them at least 8gb of Hash. I use Fritz17 built in opening book. I also tried using syzygy but it doesn't change much.

Just to put things into perspective, The Galaxy A7 has only 8 (small) cores running at 1.9ghz max (I'm not even sure if it even reaches this speed the entire time), and I don't think the IPC even comes close to intel desktop CPU. Also the RAM is probably much slower on the smartphone and less quantity of it. I know the Droidfish app uses only 64mb of hash, and has very limited opening book (maybe 3 or 4 moves before starts to think).
Heck.. I am not even sure the Smartphone is even 64bit LOL!

The PC version is not only 64bit but uses BMI2 and AVX2 versions for all the engines!

So with all those hardware benefits, it still can't beat the little A7 Smartphone. It always ends up in a Draw! not even a hint of an edge (well..maybe sometimes, but it disappears very fast).

What is the explanation? Doesn't the hardware worth anything?

Without showing some games there is not much we can say about this...
You maintain that you even give advantage to the entity playing on your desktop PC by using a bigger/better book?
OTH it seems you use latest dev builds of SF (I guess this is what it means when you give no version for the SF on galaxy?)
vs. max. SF12 (using SF10 vs. it makes no sense at all).

Also you don't describe how you play them against at all? Didn't we have a thread already, when someone did this manually
and it was revealed he added a time advantage of X:1 for the smartphone side?
What about ponder settings BTW?

Edit:
Found the thread I vaguely remembered above, read it carefully.
http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... ne+desktop

So there are a lot of things to consider, but there is no actual data delivered by you.

[Patishi]

Hi,
My PC specs:
CPU: intel i9 10900K (10 cores @4.9ghz)
RAM: Gskill TridentZ 32gb (2x16gb) 3600mhz cl16
SSD: 1TB Samsung 970 EVO plus (nvme)
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Master

I do 10 minutes blitz games between the PC and the A7 (Droidfish - Stockfish + NNUE).
on the PC I use fully updated Fritz17 GUI running differnt engines: Stockfish 12 (BMI2/ AVX2 + NNUE), Stockfish 10 (no NNUE), Komodo 14, Dragon (NNUE + AVX2)...I give them at least 8gb of Hash. I use Fritz17 built in opening book. I also tried using syzygy but it doesn't change much.

Just to put things into perspective, The Galaxy A7 has only 8 (small) cores running at 1.9ghz max (I'm not even sure if it even reaches this speed the entire time), and I don't think the IPC even comes close to intel desktop CPU. Also the RAM is probably much slower on the smartphone and less quantity of it. I know the Droidfish app uses only 64mb of hash, and has very limited opening book (maybe 3 or 4 moves before starts to think).
Heck.. I am not even sure the Smartphone is even 64bit LOL!

The PC version is not only 64bit but uses BMI2 and AVX2 versions for all the engines!

So with all those hardware benefits, it still can't beat the little A7 Smartphone. It always ends up in a Draw! not even a hint of an edge (well..maybe sometimes, but it disappears very fast).

What is the explanation? Doesn't the hardware worth anything?

Without showing some games there is not much we can say about this...
You maintain that you even give advantage to the entity playing on your desktop PC by using a bigger/better book?
OTH it seems you use latest dev builds of SF (I guess this is what it means when you give no version for the SF on galaxy?)
vs. max. SF12 (using SF10 vs. it makes no sense at all).

Also you don't describe how you play them against at all? Didn't we have a thread already, when someone did this manually
and it was revealed he added a time advantage of X:1 for the smartphone side?
What about ponder settings BTW?

Edit:
Found the thread I vaguely remembered above, read it carefully.
http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... ne+desktop

So there are a lot of things to consider, but there is no actual data delivered by you.

What data do you need exactly? I do the moves manually, 10 minutes on both sides with ponder on.
I did hundreds of games already.. I guess Droidfish is using the latest version of stockfish because it uses NNUE.

[Guenther]

...
Edit:
Found the thread I vaguely remembered above, read it carefully.
http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... ne+desktop

So there are a lot of things to consider, but there is no actual data delivered by you.

What data do you need exactly? I do the moves manually, 10 minutes on both sides with ponder on.
I did hundreds of games already.. I guess Droidfish is using the latest version of stockfish because it uses NNUE.

You did not follow my advice. Please first read the thread I have linked before.
Best start here:
http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 20#p861008

[towforce]

Heck.. I am not even sure the Smartphone is even 64bit LOL!

The A7 uses the Exynos 7880 Octa SOC (link) which has a 64 bit bus.

Even if this PC/phone comparison is not exactly fair, it seems to raise the serious issue that chess is beginning to close in on a draw even on low-cost low-powered hardware now.

[Guenther]

Heck.. I am not even sure the Smartphone is even 64bit LOL!

The A7 uses the Exynos 7880 Octa SOC (link) which has a 64 bit bus.

Even if this PC/phone comparison is not exactly fair, it seems to raise the serious issue that chess is beginning to close in on a draw even on low-cost low-powered hardware now.

You also did not read the link given... you cannot expect real games with manually transferring moves by Humans especially with ponder on.
This completely wrecks any given (pseudo) tc.

[Patishi]

Heck.. I am not even sure the Smartphone is even 64bit LOL!

The A7 uses the Exynos 7880 Octa SOC (link) which has a 64 bit bus.

Even if this PC/phone comparison is not exactly fair, it seems to raise the serious issue that chess is beginning to close in on a draw even on low-cost low-powered hardware now.

You also did not read the link given... you cannot expect real games with manually transferring moves by Humans especially with ponder on.
This completely wrecks any given (pseudo) tc.

I read the link, but I don't have an AMD CPU and It's not what this thread is about.
Please explain what is wrong with manually playing the moves myself. If a certain machine is significantly stronger it should win regardless.

[towforce]

Heck.. I am not even sure the Smartphone is even 64bit LOL!

The A7 uses the Exynos 7880 Octa SOC (link) which has a 64 bit bus.

Even if this PC/phone comparison is not exactly fair, it seems to raise the serious issue that chess is beginning to close in on a draw even on low-cost low-powered hardware now.

You also did not read the link given... you cannot expect real games with manually transferring moves by Humans especially with ponder on.
This completely wrecks any given (pseudo) tc.

I am guilty as charged, and I respect the fact that it's not a strictly fair competition. The key point is:

* chess is finite, and has an upper limit on quality of play

* if a low power computer can get draws against a high power computer most of the time, this implies that we might be getting somewhere near that upper limit

Obviously one cannot say this conclusively - it's only an implication. However, in the context of computer chess, it's a very important issue IMO.

[Patishi]

Heck.. I am not even sure the Smartphone is even 64bit LOL!

The A7 uses the Exynos 7880 Octa SOC (link) which has a 64 bit bus.

Even if this PC/phone comparison is not exactly fair, it seems to raise the serious issue that chess is beginning to close in on a draw even on low-cost low-powered hardware now.

You also did not read the link given... you cannot expect real games with manually transferring moves by Humans especially with ponder on.
This completely wrecks any given (pseudo) tc.

I am guilty as charged, and I respect the fact that it's not a strictly fair competition. The key point is:

* chess is finite, and has an upper limit on quality of play

* if a low power computer can get draws against a high power computer most of the time, this implies that we might be getting somewhere near that upper limit

Obviously one cannot say this conclusively - it's only an implication. However, in the context of computer chess, it's a very important issue IMO.

It is interesting..but my opinion is that the "upper limit" is still very far. My guess is that if we had a super engine that could solve the game to its end (see all the moves) than it would win every time against even the best engines of today.
But this is just my speculation. Having said that, I guess that for a machine to beat other machine It should be much much stronger, much stronger than what I have over the Galaxy A7. I just didn't expect this, I thought that this kind of hardware advantage is enough.

[towforce]

..I guess that for a machine to beat other machine It should be much much stronger, much stronger than what I have over the Galaxy A7. I just didn't expect this, I thought that this kind of hardware advantage is enough.

When building supercomputers, engineers work hard to get components as physically close together as they can. In an SOC they are very close together, which you'd expect to significantly improve Geekbench scores.

OTOH, CPUs for devices with access to a lot of electrical power can have a lot of extra features to make them faster, and this seems to more than make up for the tiny distances in an SOC overall: but phone SOCs do a lot better in Geekbench tests than I personally would expect.