M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

[Ckappe]

If you read the complete thread and check the benchmarks of chess engines compiles, you will realize that M1 loses out to the most popular, even less expensive, AMD based modern laptops when it comes to performance, stamina, and overall usability for Chess. Very little I am afraid to be impressed with about the M1s price/performance offering if you are not a fanboy who only care about Apples own apps and proprietary sw solutions.

[towforce]

If you read the complete thread and check the benchmarks of chess engines compiles, you will realize that M1 loses out to the most popular, even less expensive, AMD based modern laptops when it comes to performance, stamina, and overall usability for Chess. Very little I am afraid to be impressed with about the M1s price/performance offering if you are not a fanboy who only care about Apples own apps and proprietary sw solutions.

Fair point - I haven't read the whole thread. When you speak of AMD based laptops, I'm guessing you're talking about Ryzen CPUs rather than SOCs, though? If so, then I agree that Ryzens will probably deliver more GeekBench points than SOCs would. However, for me SOCs, even if they're not the best choice for chess or other applications that require extreme computing capacity, are absolutely revolutionary because they deliver so much computer power for such a low price (and so little electricity consumption), and I think that SOC technology will thus change things more than most people are expecting. Cheap smart watches deliver phenomenal benefits in terms of health/sleep monitoring - and this is only the beginning!

[Ckappe]

...are absolutely revolutionary because they deliver so much computer power for such a low price (and so little electricity consumption)

Errm, Nooo, Not revolutionary at all in price/performance (if you don't limit the comparison only to the single most overpriced brand in the industry). They perform worse than lower-priced Ryzen alternatives! You can get 58xx/48xx even with an added powerful AI-friendly GPUs for a similar price point. So really NOTHING revolutionary, apart from another smooth transition of CPU architecture (similar to what Apple did when moving from Motorola to Intel). Sadly that's "revolutionary" only for pundits and fanboys, unwilling to look at faster HW options if they don't have a specific logo painted on the gear.

I would go so far as to say even Intel 11th gen Laptops like the New Samsung Galaxy Book pro are far better value than M1-based laptops these days.

Performance would be even slightly worse than the M1 (25%) with an i7-1165G7, but would provide better overall compatibility with most chess tools and engines, is 40% lighter (870g), thinner bezels, better display ( higher contrast and better color due to OLED), More RAM (32GB). more ports and even support for eGPU, similar battery-stamina, and built-in 4G/5G, etc. for the road - all for less money in most markets.

[AlexChess]

...are absolutely revolutionary because they deliver so much computer power for such a low price (and so little electricity consumption)

Errm, Nooo, Not revolutionary at all in price/performance (if you don't limit the comparison only to the single most overpriced brand in the industry). They perform worse than lower-priced Ryzen alternatives! You can get 58xx/48xx even with an added powerful AI-friendly GPUs for a similar price point. So really NOTHING revolutionary, apart from another smooth transition of CPU architecture (similar to what Apple did when moving from Motorola to Intel). Sadly that's "revolutionary" only for pundits and fanboys, unwilling to look at faster HW options if they don't have a specific logo painted on the gear.

I would go so far as to say even Intel 11th gen Laptops like the New Samsung Galaxy Book pro are far better value than M1-based laptops these days.

Performance would be even slightly worse than the M1 (25%) with an i7-1165G7, but would provide better overall compatibility with most chess tools and engines, is 40% lighter (870g), thinner bezels, better display ( higher contrast and better color due to OLED), More RAM (32GB). more ports and even support for eGPU, similar battery-stamina, and built-in 4G/5G, etc. for the road - all for less money in most markets.

On the 2000$ 3900x Ryzen 9 32 GB + AMD Radeon Pro WX7100 8GB of my brother, engines with AVX2 24 CPUs run only 2x faster, despite the fact than fans run at full speed and his big tower rumor is like an helicopter

I'm not an Apple fanboy, I use EVERYDAY also Ubuntu 20.04 and Windows 10 ARM64 but, having solved all the issues that I have encountered being an M1 pioneer, now I'm more than happy of my little & silent 700$ Mac mini M1 8-256GB

[Modern Times]

On the 2000$ 3900x Ryzen 9 32 GB + AMD Radeon Pro WX7100 8GB of my brother, engines with AVX2 24 CPUs run only 50% faster, despite the fact than fans run at full speed and his big tower rumor is like an helicopter

What test is that exactly ? What engine, what version, and how it was run ? And the results ?

[towforce]

...are absolutely revolutionary because they deliver so much computer power for such a low price (and so little electricity consumption)

Errm, Nooo, Not revolutionary at all in price/performance (if you don't limit the comparison only to the single most overpriced brand in the industry). They perform worse than lower-priced Ryzen alternatives! You can get 58xx/48xx even with an added powerful AI-friendly GPUs for a similar price point. So really NOTHING revolutionary, apart from another smooth transition of CPU architecture (similar to what Apple did when moving from Motorola to Intel). Sadly that's "revolutionary" only for pundits and fanboys, unwilling to look at faster HW options if they don't have a specific logo painted on the gear.

I would go so far as to say even Intel 11th gen Laptops like the New Samsung Galaxy Book pro are far better value than M1-based laptops these days.

Performance would be even slightly worse than the M1 (25%) with an i7-1165G7, but would provide better overall compatibility with most chess tools and engines, is 40% lighter (870g), thinner bezels, better display ( higher contrast and better color due to OLED), More RAM (32GB). more ports and even support for eGPU, similar battery-stamina, and built-in 4G/5G, etc. for the road - all for less money in most markets.

I think we're talking at cross purposes here: I was praising SOC technology in general (of which the A1 is an example), and have conceded that systems with powerful CPUs like Ryzens are likely to outperform SOCs in calculation-heavy applications. I concede that the M1 SOC is expensive (especially as it's only available as part of a finished product), but there are SOCs available which are:

* inexpensive
* small
* low power consumption
* very capable in comparison with, say, "ordinary" (as opposed to gaming machines) PCs from not long ago

The "revolution" I was talking about was not in chess elo points, but in the fact that small, powerful, low power consumption computing is so cheap now that, IMO, it will change more things than most people expect in our everyday lives.

[AlexChess]

On the 2000$ 3900x Ryzen 9 32 GB + AMD Radeon Pro WX7100 8GB of my brother, engines with AVX2 24 CPUs run only 50% faster, despite the fact than fans run at full speed and his big tower rumor is like an helicopter

What test is that exactly ? What engine, what version, and how it was run ? And the results ?

Arena Chess folder directly copied from my Windows 10 ARM64, then using the AVX or BM2 versions. I cannot test them extensively because it is my brother's work PC. I was expecting at least a 3x speed ratio, but mN /s were only between 50 and 100% more than running on macOS M1 native using Fat Fritz 2.0 (github source compiled for mac M1) , Igel 3.0.0 and Cfish xxxxxx2021.

[Ckappe]

On the 2000$ 3900x Ryzen 9 32 GB + AMD Radeon Pro WX7100 8GB of my brother, engines with AVX2 24 CPUs run only 50% faster, despite the fact than fans run at full speed and his big tower rumor is like an helicopter

What test is that exactly ? What engine, what version, and how it was run ? And the results ?

Arena Chess folder directly copied from my Windows 10 ARM64, then using the AVX or BM2 versions. I cannot test them extensively because it is my brother's work PC. I was expecting at least a 3x speed ratio, but mN /s were only between 50 and 100% more than running on macOS M1 native using Fat Fritz 2.0 (github source compiled for mac M1) , Igel 3.0.0 and Cfish xxxxxx2021.

Why are you referring to flawed questionable Apple-friendly benchmarks instead of real-life chess engine performance benches?

You don't even need to compare with a CPU that runs multiple times faster than an M1. Even a cheaper R7 1700 currently outperforms (16Mnps) an M1 desktop-computerby a substantial margin today for Chess engines like SF.

3-times sustained SF performance diff on a CPU is A LOT!! ( Avg. bench of SF13 is about 37.000.000 NPS on a 3900X on std SF13 with NNUE ). This is more than 300% of the performance of an M1-based desktop computer currently as far as I know. I would be very surprised if the upcoming 12-16 thread version of Apple silicon would be 300% faster than the M1., And most likely the price of the now 2 years old 3900X will be even more advantageous once the M2/M3 finally appears, and AMD will of course already have moved on to newer Zen3 chips like "Genesis Peak" etc. They will not keep the 2019 chipset forever ya know.

[Modern Times]

Indeed, try a benchmark that actually means something. The title of this thread says "M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?"

For example take Stockfish 10, double-click on it and type

uci
setoption name Threads value 8
setoption name Hash value 2048
go depth 32

And then give us the stats. Of course that may not be real life either because your M1 probably might not have started throttling at that point.

I have a Ryzen 7 3700U laptop - Lenovo Ideapad, Zen 2. A budget machine, £500 seven or eight months ago, and with 512GB M2 SSD and 16GB RAM for that price. I suspect there are compromises in performance for that price, e.g. the RAM speed.

info depth 32 seldepth 49 multipv 1 score cp 62 nodes 756773782 nps 6520089

The M1 is going to be faster no doubt, but price / performance ?

[Modern Times]

Another one on the same basis:

Ryzen 9 5900X 24 threads
info depth 32 seldepth 50 multipv 1 score cp 42 nodes 2574618193 nps 40,621,293