If you could buy any single CPU system for chess . . .

[ouachita]

All the real CC experts are here at Talkchess, so this should be an easy question. Which single CPU system would you build/buy? I'm just a lowly engineer playing a bit of correspondence chess.

[jdart]

For correspondence you'd want one of the higher end CPUs: the 16- or 18-core Intel i9 chips or the Ryzen 2990WX. The Intel i9-7960X is about even with the 2990WX according to Passmark scores.

These chips are really amazingly powerful for a desktop processor. Somewhat pricey though.

--Jon

[ouachita]

Jon,
Thanks for your reply. Do we know for certain that more slower cores are preferable to fewer faster cores, e.g., are two 2.0GHz cores better than one 4.0GHz core, etc.?

[Geonerd]

Check out http://www.ipmanchess.yolasite.com/amd- ... -bench.php
You'll find a wide variety of hardware. IMO, older server hardware can offer a great bang-for-the-buck value. Be sure to get plenty of memory to support large hash tables when running overnight "thinks."

[jdart]

Jon,
Thanks for your reply. Do we know for certain that more slower cores are preferable to fewer faster cores, e.g., are two 2.0GHz cores better than one 4.0GHz core, etc.?

You have to look at the total system throughput, which depends on CPU cache and memory bandwidth as well as cores and clock. Best to use a benchmark like Stockfish bench.

[Dann Corbit]

I am waiting until early next year when the 7nm AMD stuff gets released.

[Milos]

For correspondence you'd want one of the higher end CPUs: the 16- or 18-core Intel i9 chips or the Ryzen 2990WX. The Intel i9-7960X is about even with the 2990WX according to Passmark scores.

These chips are really amazingly powerful for a desktop processor. Somewhat pricey though.

--Jon

Passmark scores are totally irrelevant since the proportion of integer operations performance in them is small.

[ouachita]

For correspondence you'd want one of the higher end CPUs: the 16- or 18-core Intel i9 chips or the Ryzen 2990WX. The Intel i9-7960X is about even with the 2990WX according to Passmark scores.

These chips are really amazingly powerful for a desktop processor. Somewhat pricey though.

--Jon

Passmark scores are totally irrelevant since the proportion of integer operations performance in them is small.

Milos,
I'm familiar with the Passmark high-end CPUs and Ipman's KN/s listing, but as I said I'm not an expert in these matters. I suppose Marco and his associates know the answer, but how does one go about selecting a system?

[ouachita]

Come on, Milos or one of you other experts, spec a system for me

[Werewolf]

Jon,
Thanks for your reply. Do we know for certain that more slower cores are preferable to fewer faster cores, e.g., are two 2.0GHz cores better than one 4.0GHz core, etc.?

Absolutely not.

With more cores you get search inefficiency. 4 cores is roughly 3x faster than 1 core; whereas 1 core at 4 GHz is 4x faster than one core at 1 GHz.