Computer for CC?

[brianr]

Forgot to address your specific questions.

Doubling speed adds about 50-100 elo, depending on the engine.
On a quad core system with engines that support parallel search, this means a 4x increase so about 100-200 elo. However, even single core engines benefit. 64 bits is also a significant benefit (again depends on the engine, say 25%-50% faster).

Other components that could impact things besides having enough RAM to support large tables (transposition, EGTB, etc) multiplied by the number of engines you want to run at the same time, are disk size and speed. SSD will help quite a bit for booting and loading/starting engines but is very expensive for EGTBs (talking 6 men, full 5 are only about 7GB).

If your budget is quite large and you want to run numerous matches, you could also look at a cluster of several systems. You can build your own, or look at some racks of blade servers. Extending parallel SMP search beyond NUMA to multi-tiered cluster search is the next "big thing" right now, IMO.

[Hood]

Like I said, I want to get better hardware and I'm looking for some suggestions! How many processors? How much do # of cores and speed matter, respectively? Does any other part of my computer matter? And so on....

Hi,

the best hardware -> you may lease the time on mainframe system.

rgds
chris

[TonyRo]

Thanks guys, for you help!

I was thinking of running two of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103727

Since 3.4 GHz seems to be some at the top of the non overclocked range, and I figured 8 processors is more than enough for a serious boost. I was perusing Rybka's FAQ and if I remember correctly this will give me an actual speed-up of around 4.5 times what I'd get out of an equivalent one processor version.

Do you think this is better than overclocking a quad core Intel, for instance:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115130

I am planning on running Windows 7 x64, but the amount of RAM is up in the air. I am under the impression that to take advantage of 64-bit systems you should have at least 4, but how much higher should I go?

[jwes]

Thanks guys, for you help!

I was thinking of running two of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103727

Since 3.4 GHz seems to be some at the top of the non overclocked range, and I figured 8 processors is more than enough for a serious boost. I was perusing Rybka's FAQ and if I remember correctly this will give me an actual speed-up of around 4.5 times what I'd get out of an equivalent one processor version.

Do you think this is better than overclocking a quad core Intel, for instance:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115130

I am planning on running Windows 7 x64, but the amount of RAM is up in the air. I am under the impression that to take advantage of 64-bit systems you should have at least 4, but how much higher should I go?

If you will be doing overnight analyses, 64 gb should do.

[brianr]

A dual socket system will be quite a bit more expensive, and will not be SMP.

Look here for non-OC'd info

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009 ... ,1406.html

and here for high-end options

http://www.jens.tauchclub-krems.at/dive ... marks.html

[TonyRo]

Hi Brian,

Thanks! You've been very helpful. I'm not sure about all the details of SMP, but you mean that since the 8 cores are separated into 2 groups, they just work less efficiently?

It looks like maybe I should just be trying to overclock one nice processor? It's cheaper and the other option just isn't that much better?

[jdart]

There's a lot of choices. It depends on your budget and exact needs.

If you wait a bit 6-core and 8-core processors are coming. But the new stuff is always expensive.

The top end desktops nowadays are mostly dual socket systems with two quad processors for a total of 8 cores. Apple's PowerMac is a nice example of this but it can get quite pricey especially if you add high-end processors, memory, monitor(s) etc. If you shop around you can get a more generic 2x4 workstation type system with Linux or Windows for around $2500. Even less if you are willing to build it yourself from parts.

If that's still out of range then your choice is probably a single quad-core system, which can still have quite high performance. As Brian noted many of these are readily overclocked. I've built a couple from scratch (newegg.com is your friend for parts). It is not terribly hard but you need to know what parts you need and have some ability to troubleshoot if things go wrong. Experience helps a lot. You can also get a "bare bones" system from newegg and other locations - these are partly assembled and you can add memory, disk etc. Cost for a decent quad is somewhere around $700-800 last I checked, assuming you have a monitor and you don't need high-end graphics for games etc.

[jdart]

To run two processors together you need a dual socket motherboard. See here:

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory ... therboards

That will add cost. More so since many of these are designed for server class (e.g. Intel Xeon) processors. But it is generally the highest performance solution.

Running a single quad is less expensive but not quite as high end in terms of performance. But overclocking is readily possible. I have had a Q9550 running at 3.2 Ghz (not an extreme overclock) 24x7 for months, no problems.

[TonyRo]

Hi Jon,

Thanks for your input. I would really like to go the dual quad core way, just based on performance. I feel like the best I'm going to get is having 8 cores, 64-bit, and so on. Is there anything particularly wrong with the AMD Processors I've already posted? They're quite fast, got good reviews, and they're not particularly expensive. I'm building my own computer, so it'll be cheaper, and I'll probably skimp on things like Graphics and Sound stuff, and so on, so I'll save some more cash there. Thanks,

-Tony

[jdart]

I've been on Intel for a while so I'm not that much up to date on AMD. No reason to avoid them I know of. But a couple sites that have good info and reviews are :

http://www.tomshardware.com

http://www.anandtech.com