I'm using HCE and the net "Niggling Nymph" for this test at short TC (10s+0.1). The hardware used is AVX2 but the "core2" executable is SSE3 but not popcnt, the "nehalem" one is popcnt+SSE4.2 while the "skylake" executable is popcnt+AVX2+BMI2...
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Rank Name Elo +/- Games Score Draw
1 minic_3.03_linux_x64_skylake_niny 56 11 2454 58.0% 39.2%
2 minic_3.03_linux_x64_nehalem_niny 13 11 2454 51.9% 40.9%
3 minic_3.03_linux_x64_nehalem 10 11 2455 51.5% 39.7%
4 minic_3.03_linux_x64_skylake 4 11 2455 50.6% 41.4%
5 minic_3.03_linux_x64_core2 -36 11 2456 44.9% 39.7%
6 minic_3.03_linux_x64_core2_niny -48 11 2456 43.1% 37.3%
For HCE first, this looks simple, performance is the same as soon as popcnt is here. Not having popcnt leads to something like -40Elo. Thre is not much dependency to vectorisation but popcnt looks quite important.
For NNUE, AVX2 is +40 versus SSE4.2 and there is again a gap of nearly 60Elo for SSE3.
So that on (very) old hardware, current Minic HCE is better than "Niggling Nymph" !
This can explain some strange results during some testing process and in rating list where I sometimes see my net underperform a lot.
In this table
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Rank Name Elo +/- Games Score Draw
1 minic_2.53_napping_nexus 270 12 3080 82.6% 25.7%
2 minic_2.53_nascent_nutrient 165 11 3080 72.1% 29.9%
3 minic_3.02_nettling_nemesis 79 10 3079 61.2% 29.3%
4 minic_3.04_noisy_notch 4 10 3079 50.6% 35.6%
5 minic_3.03_niggling_nymph -33 10 3079 45.3% 35.1%
6 minic_3.02_narcotized_nightshift -47 10 3080 43.2% 34.4%
7 minic_2.53 -52 10 3079 42.6% 34.2%
8 minic_2.46 -64 10 3080 40.9% 32.7%
9 minic_3.03 -70 10 3079 40.1% 34.0%
10 minic_3.04 -78 10 3079 38.9% 32.5%
11 minic_3.01_nefarious_nucleus -127 11 3080 32.4% 26.4%
There is a more 100Elo gap between "Nefarious Nucleus" and "Niggling Nymph" on AVX2 hardware, this means that on old hardware, "Nefarious Nucleus" or even "Narcotized Nightshift" can be way weaker than HCE.
Don't get me wrong here, I am totally thankful and respectful of rating list work. It's probably can be a better process like any other thing, but people investing their time, organizing test, maintaining web site, ... about engine rating are really important to me. Thanks again guys !