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

[Ponti]

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?

Get a water cooler and analyse the positions with (max cores-1) and no HT.

Regarding openings, its a good idea to use online op. books, or CB or CA´s last opening encyclopaedias. You can use Aquarium too, a good program but not intuitive and still buggy.

What´s really bad about corr. chess is that people are using engines to play middlegame and complex endgames, not the openings... so correspondence chess is a very different game (like "Internet Chess", as GM Nigel Short once said).

Actually for OTB players, according to many friends of mine (NMs, FMs, IMs and GMs at my local chess club), corr.chess is not good at all and may hurt or worsen your chess:

- time controls are too large, too different;

- engines are being used widely in every phase of the game: an engine move is often a "mistery";

- if you reach an ending with 7 or less pieces, will you play it perfectly ? "Playing with tablebases" and "analysing with tablebases" are very different things. GMs don´t play endings perfectly, tablebases do.

- what if your opponent uses a much faster computer than yours ?

- You should "find" positions that engines don´t understand well,out of the openings or in the middlegame, so that human intervention matters. That´s not an easy task nowadays, as engines are getting better and better. Those positions exist, but probably you would never play them OTB, unless you are Jobava, Morozevich or Nakamura, haha.

[leavenfish]

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?

Get a water cooler and analyse the positions with (max cores-1) and no HT.

Regarding openings, its a good idea to use online op. books, or CB or CA´s last opening encyclopaedias. You can use Aquarium too, a good program but not intuitive and still buggy.

What´s really bad about corr. chess is that people are using engines to play middlegame and complex endgames, not the openings... so correspondence chess is a very different game (like "Internet Chess", as GM Nigel Short once said).

Actually for OTB players, according to many friends of mine (NMs, FMs, IMs and GMs at my local chess club), corr.chess is not good at all and may hurt or worsen your chess:

- time controls are too large, too different;

- engines are being used widely in every phase of the game: an engine move is often a "mistery";

- if you reach an ending with 7 or less pieces, will you play it perfectly ? "Playing with tablebases" and "analysing with tablebases" are very different things. GMs don´t play endings perfectly, tablebases do.

- what if your opponent uses a much faster computer than yours ?

- You should "find" positions that engines don´t understand well,out of the openings or in the middlegame, so that human intervention matters. That´s not an easy task nowadays, as engines are getting better and better. Those positions exist, but probably you would never play them OTB, unless you are Jobava, Morozevich or Nakamura, haha.

Thanks for the tips!

"You should "find" positions that engines don´t understand well,out of the openings" [/quote] -- Precisely why I play 1.Nc3 OTB. I've got White half the time...know it pretty well and most people think, "oh my...what do I do now? How can I transpose into one of 'my' lines???" It's worth a fortune OTB.

So, even get a watercooler if running a stock i7-6700 (not overclocked)? Would not some fans and good termal paste be enough?

Aquarium. I've got it...hate the damn thing.

I agree, Correspondence Chess does not really help your OTB...two tourneys ago I played a Correspondence GM OTB...I won without too much difficult. It's a game of research (and now, computers). I much prefer OTB.

[tpoppins]

Never mind the i7-6700 - a dual-Xeon E5-2670 box will give you double the NPS at stock speed. I got mine (a refurbished Dell) from eBay for $740 shipped, that included an upgrade to 32GB RAM and a 238GB SSD to store 6-men Syzygy TBs.

If I had to buy again, however, I'd spend an extra hundred on a Lenovo box - they run cooler and more quietly, should be a bit more robust, too.

If you want to go a notch up, a dual Xeon E5-2640 v3 is the next best option; it's 3X the price, though.

[Jesse Gersenson]

A modern engine running on one Sandy Bridge core needs 1 second / game to spot errors and find improvements to your OTB play. If you're a GM use 20 seconds / game.

Code: Select all

Depth	seconds/game	seconds per move 
1	0.5	0.006
2	0.6	0.007
3	0.6	0.007
4	0.6	0.008
5	0.9	0.011
6	1.1	0.014
7	1.5	0.019
8	2.2	0.027
9	2.8	0.035
10	4.3	0.054
11	11.7	0.146
12	16.1	0.201
13	19.5	0.244
14	44.1	0.551
15	61.9	0.774
16	100.2	1.252
17	126.1	1.576

So far I haven't read anything from you, other than 'want', which suggests you need a new machine. Run an engine on one core and see how your machine handles the heat. Btw, the thermal paste typically dries up after 4+ years - no matter what you decide, the paste in the laptop needs to be replaced.

No, cooling wouldn't be an issue - (I assume) the machine's designed to run for (at least) days at full cpu usage. Regardless, I'd vote against the water cooler because they require you to clean them monthly. Noctua fans are top of the line and quiet (recommended to me by Lukas Cim.).

[Tdunbug]

I also have found that not all thermal paste is created equal!

[leavenfish]

A modern engine running on one Sandy Bridge core needs 1 second / game to spot errors and find improvements to your OTB play. If you're a GM use 20 seconds / game.

Code: Select all

Depth	seconds/game	seconds per move 
1	0.5	0.006
2	0.6	0.007
3	0.6	0.007
4	0.6	0.008
5	0.9	0.011
6	1.1	0.014
7	1.5	0.019
8	2.2	0.027
9	2.8	0.035
10	4.3	0.054
11	11.7	0.146
12	16.1	0.201
13	19.5	0.244
14	44.1	0.551
15	61.9	0.774
16	100.2	1.252
17	126.1	1.576

So far I haven't read anything from you, other than 'want', which suggests you need a new machine. Run an engine on one core and see how your machine handles the heat. Btw, the thermal paste typically dries up after 4+ years - no matter what you decide, the paste in the laptop needs to be replaced.

No, cooling wouldn't be an issue - (I assume) the machine's designed to run for (at least) days at full cpu usage. Regardless, I'd vote against the water cooler because they require you to clean them monthly. Noctua fans are top of the line and quiet (recommended to me by Lukas Cim.).

Well, apparently I experimented with Chess Position Trainer at one point and have had it using 2 Cores for some time. The program said Threads (4 cores available: 2). I'll often have that running and fire up Komodo in ChessBase, , so that makes for 3 cores then have spreadsheets open, be on the internet, etc. Glad you mentioned to check. That might help some.

Yes, every 5-6 yrs I get a new computer so it's partly a 'want' thing.

I like to run an engine showing 3-4 PV so as to see playable options or how fine a line someone has to walk going down a line (if there is often just 1 or two good moves, it's more likely my opponent will step wrong at some point). To do that, I like to run StockFish at about 27 ply or more (Komodo often gets about the same options with a couple ply less...odd). In CPT I set it to flag 'critical' alternatives at .3 centipawns...depends on the engine though.

thanks again everyone for the computer/cpu suggestions! I'm beginning to think that I may go for an i7-6700 with good fans and leave it at that. There are good prices on ready made systems at the moment.

[leavenfish]

In the end, this may be what I 'settle' for...pocket the $250 I might have spent in keeping with my Under $1k thoughts.

http://www.costco.com/HP-ENVY-750c-Desk ... 12027.html

Can't get an i7-6700 for much less even with no graphics card (would not save but $50/$75) and I wasn't looking for one with a graphics card. It should keep me going for another 5 yrs.

[Milos]

In the end, this may be what I 'settle' for...pocket the $250 I might have spent in keeping with my Under $1k thoughts.

http://www.costco.com/HP-ENVY-750c-Desk ... 12027.html

Can't get an i7-6700 for much less even with no graphics card (would not save but $50/$75) and I wasn't looking for one with a graphics card. It should keep me going for another 5 yrs.

Gee, that's really a rip off, CPU is like 300$ alone, but rest is total crap, I presume board is like 50$, GPU is 100$, memory 80$, HDD 50$, case+supply 50$ giving in total 630$, so 120$ less than that HP (ofc you put some Linux instead of crappy Win10), and these are Amazon prices, i.e. you can find much cheaper if you search a bit more.
But I guess you are not kind of guy that builds his own machine .

[leavenfish]

My time is worth $$

You forget some other items in your calculations, gets a lot closer to $740 when you so that.

If there were one from a reputable dealer with roughly the same specs, I'd get it...don't see them though. The Costco spec are actually not bad and their returns are easy peasy.

[Ponti]

As the Xeon is octa-core,I was thinking ...is it faster ***_for_chess_*** (I mean,just 1 processor) than the i6700K ?
It is a lot cheaper also..