Best for chess: i7 5820K or i7 6700k ?

[leavenfish]

Thanks for input, Brian.

The program CHESS POSITION TRAINER will let you customize an analysis of your full opening repertoire. I also have Chessbase...but it's not as versatile at such things as CPT.

http://www.chesspositiontrainer.com/ind ... n/features

The engine anaylsis in it can be customizable....say analyse moves 8 thru 25 and all the branches or for a given time per more or say 25 or 29 ply (just picking numbers here) or say 5 min. a move. Mostly I would use it to look for good alternatives to my repertoire moves or good unexplored alternatives for my opponent so I can add them to my repertoire for study. So...a lot of positions. And I have multiple repertoires.

Analyzing games...maybe just the thousand + I've played in OTB tourneys, to identify and classify types of errors I repeatedly miss.

After this...I would probably like to run single engine vs engine matches from key positions in my repertoire.

[Jesse Gersenson]

My old SandyBridge laptop just gets too hot.

The $20 fix is to:
1. replace the thermal paste between the cpu and heat sink with a fresh dab of 'artic silver 5'
2. clean the fan
3. add a 'usb cooler fan' underneath the laptop

[leavenfish]

No thanks.
It's also old...just want to use it for non-intensive stuff these days. Freezes up too much when I try to do to much on it....that is, have an engine running and do other things.

[Ponti]

I did not know there was a SF benchmark... is it the best chess benchmark now ?

There is an i7-5930k selling here ... for US$ 802, while the
i7-5960X is US$ 1211.

There´s also a new i7-6950X, but probably it is much more expensive, as it is a 10-core processor (that is really good for chess,uh ?) (no price shown at the seller´s site).

I guess dual-Xeons are probably better but the whole computer is also much more expensive (motherboard, ECC memories...). It´s not aesy to buy all parts separately in Brazil.

Besides chess I´ll do some video and photo editing, but not professionaly.
I don´t like those modern ´shooting´ games, they just make me dizzy - perhaps it´s my "age" problem, hahahahahaha.

[Jesse Gersenson]

No thanks.
It's also old...just want to use it for non-intensive stuff these days. Freezes up too much when I try to do too much on it....that is, have an engine running and do other things.

Your machine can do about 150,000,000,000 floating point operations per second. The i7-6700k can do 50 billion more than that. Is there a magic number above which you'll comfortably multitask? I'd have guess that 150 billion would have been well within spec, wouldn't you?

If the machine can't multitask something is failing - either the hardware (my guess is the thermal paste has dried up, or there's bad ram) or software (operating system or driver).

[Milos]

I guess dual-Xeons are probably better but the whole computer is also much more expensive (motherboard, ECC memories...). It´s not aesy to buy all parts separately in Brazil.

You can buy from ebay in Brazil, don't you?
E5-2670 is ~100$ both on ebay and aliexpress.
2 socket motherboard such as Asus or ASRock is ~350$ new on Amazon.
DDR3 Buffered ECC RAM is ~2-3$/GB on ebay.
Add to that 100$ for coolers and power supply (in case you don't have sufficient atm) and you are good to go.
So you can get 32GB dual socket E5-2670 for around 700$. Really don't see how any i7 can beat it both in performance and in price.
Here are all the details you'd need:
http://www.techspot.com/review/1155-aff ... l-xeon-pc/

[Ponti]

I thought multitasking depends on:

1) what kind of tasks
2) amount of memory,
3) chipset (?)

http://www.custompcguide.net/intel-skyl ... 25-brutal/

https://msdn.microsoft.com/pt-br/librar ... s.85).aspx[/url]

[Ponti]

What I am thinking is that since 'real time' analysis or gameplay is not the important thing - I'm wanting an engine to analyse opening systems I play and maybe go thru my games to look for errors...say over night or over a couple of days

IMHO :

To analyse opening systems you play: you mean you're searching for novelties (like a professional player) ? Are you a correspondence player ?

Going thru your games to look for errors: take a good engine, run under a GUI and it´ll point all your errors (remember that strategic errors are not the strong point of engines, but they´re great to spot tactical errors).
That´s software-related.

The main differences are:

- a faster machine will analyse more moves and games in less time.

- If you run the computer 24 h/360 days electric bill may be different. Power comsumption of Xeon (servers) system are much less than some top AMD-cpu based systems. Intel processors *in general* consume less power. It obviously depends of what kind of other hardware you have, like graphics. To run chess only you don´t need a dedicated graphic card ...

If you are an OTB amateur player you don´t necessarily _need_ a faster machine, BUT if you want to do other things with your computer besides chess, the question is the budget.

The way you analyse your games is important too, but this is not to be discussed here. Take advices from FM, IM or GMs (reading books about the subject, too).

About freezing:
- clean the memories with a rubber (!?)
- improve CPU temperature - better coolers, better CPU tower
- run Linux

Just my 2 cents...

[leavenfish]

What I am thinking is that since 'real time' analysis or gameplay is not the important thing - I'm wanting an engine to analyse opening systems I play and maybe go thru my games to look for errors...say over night or over a couple of days

IMHO :

To analyse opening systems you play: you mean you're searching for novelties (like a professional player) ? Are you a correspondence player ?

Going thru your games to look for errors: take a good engine, run under a GUI and it´ll point all your errors (remember that strategic errors are not the strong point of engines, but they´re great to spot tactical errors).
That´s software-related.

The main differences are:

- a faster machine will analyse more moves and games in less time.

- If you run the computer 24 h/360 days electric bill may be different. Power comsumption of Xeon (servers) system are much less than some top AMD-cpu based systems. Intel processors *in general* consume less power. It obviously depends of what kind of other hardware you have, like graphics. To run chess only you don´t need a dedicated graphic card ...

If you are an OTB amateur player you don´t necessarily _need_ a faster machine, BUT if you want to do other things with your computer besides chess, the question is the budget.

The way you analyse your games is important too, but this is not to be discussed here. Take advices from FM, IM or GMs (reading books about the subject, too).

About freezing:
- clean the memories with a rubber (!?)
- improve CPU temperature - better coolers, better CPU tower
- run Linux

Just my 2 cents...

Not so much 'novelties'...rather my repertoire is rather offbeat, but some do transpose into main lines. I was 2399 ICCF when I quit...people were clearly starting to use engines while I wasn't. But I do fancy getting back into that...and to be on more equal footing!

I'm thinking most common AMD CPU's would not work well as their APU are more for graphics. I presume a 4gh APU would not work as well as a 4ghz Intel.

I'm thinking I may get a stock i7-6700 at 3.4ghz unit from HP or Dell...might be all I need if I use my laptop for non-chess items. I do wonder though, would cooling be an issue if I left that on crunching chess positions for a day or two at a time?

[leavenfish]

No thanks.
It's also old...just want to use it for non-intensive stuff these days. Freezes up too much when I try to do too much on it....that is, have an engine running and do other things.

Your machine can do about 150,000,000,000 floating point operations per second. The i7-6700k can do 50 billion more than that. Is there a magic number above which you'll comfortably multitask? I'd have guess that 150 billion would have been well within spec, wouldn't you?

If the machine can't multitask something is failing - either the hardware (my guess is the thermal paste has dried up, or there's bad ram) or software (operating system or driver).

It just slows down in general...keyboard area gets a bit 'warm'. Thus, I just want something just for chess. Not running a chess engine for any period of time, the laptop is fine.