Suggestions for a new laptop

[algerbrex]

Since my chess programming addiction...err...hobby, has become a bit more involved than I ever anticipated several months ago, I'm looking into purchasing a better laptop.

Currently, I've been doing all of my work off of a Google Pixelbook. Which is fine for connecting to the internet...but not very good for CPU and RAM intensive tasks like running SPRT tests or texel tuning sessions.

My price range is in the vicinity of $500-1000, which I realize isn't very much in terms of a high-end laptop, but that's the best I can work with right now. I also realize I can build my own setup too, which I something I'll definitely look into for the future (since I plan on working on my engine for several years), but right now, I'd much rather just be able to purchase a prebuilt laptop.

I'm starting to do my own research and looking around, but I also figured it might be a good idea to come here and get some suggestions. As I mentioned, the two primary tasks I'll be using the new laptop for would be engine testing and tuning, while I would continue to use my current laptop for college-related tasks.

Thanks.

[mvanthoor]

Personally, I'd go for a laptop with as many cores as you can get, so you can run 8 test games in parallel.

8 games means 16 engines loaded. If you run at a fast TC such as 10+0.1s, a small TT of 16 or 32 MB is enough. (If you make it bigger, it will never become full, so you can never test any replacement schemes.) 16 x 32 MB is only 512 MB. If you want to test with CCRL-conditions at some point you'd need a 256 MB TT, or 4096 MB for 16 engines. Some space for the operating system as well, obviously.

I'd go for something like a Ryzen 4700U / 4800U (8 cores, 15W TDP), or a Ryzen 4800H (8 cores, 45W TDP). The 4800H obviously is the fastest per core, but also much hotter (and harder to cool, and much louder). I'd put 16 GB RAM in it.

I'm actually on the verge of building a system (small desktop) around a Ryzen 5700G and 16 GB RAM. I'd rather not run 24 hour testing sessions on a laptop, but then again, I've never really been a "laptop man"; I consider them to be an option for some occasional office work, or "normal" work when connected to a screen, mouse and keyboard, but I consider them to be unfit for very heavy, hours-long workloads.

PS: I don't know if the Ryzen 4700 / 4800 cpu's are Zen 2 or Zen 3; in case of Zen2, you'd have to compile your engine with popcnt instead of bmi2, because bmi2-performance is poor on anything older than Zen3.

[mvanthoor]

It seems that, if you'd want 8 cores _and_ Zen3, then the 5800U is the only option:

https://tweakers.net/nieuws/173494/geru ... -apus.html

See the table below the article.

[algerbrex]

Personally, I'd go for a laptop with as many cores as you can get, so you can run 8 test games in parallel.

8 games means 16 engines loaded. If you run at a fast TC such as 10+0.1s, a small TT of 16 or 32 MB is enough. (If you make it bigger, it will never become full, so you can never test any replacement schemes.) 16 x 32 MB is only 512 MB. If you want to test with CCRL-conditions at some point you'd need a 256 MB TT, or 4096 MB for 16 engines. Some space for the operating system as well, obviously.

I'd go for something like a Ryzen 4700U / 4800U (8 cores, 15W TDP), or a Ryzen 4800H (8 cores, 45W TDP). The 4800H obviously is the fastest per core, but also much hotter (and harder to cool, and much louder). I'd put 16 GB RAM in it.

I'm actually on the verge of building a system (small desktop) around a Ryzen 5700G and 16 GB RAM. I'd rather not run 24 hour testing sessions on a laptop, but then again, I've never really been a "laptop man"; I consider them to be an option for some occasional office work, or "normal" work when connected to a screen, mouse and keyboard, but I consider them to be unfit for very heavy, hours-long workloads.

PS: I don't know if the Ryzen 4700 / 4800 cpu's are Zen 2 or Zen 3; in case of Zen2, you'd have to compile your engine with popcnt instead of bmi2, because bmi2-performance is poor on anything older than Zen3.

Thanks, Marcel, I imagined I'd need something along the same lines as well since what I really need is more cores to do things more efficiently. Especially tuning sessions. So I'll definitely look into something with one of the Ryzen models you listed and the link you posted.

And I'll make a note of popcnt vs bmi2 compilation if using Zen2.

[JohnWoe]

4800U and 4800H are the same chip. I bought 4800U as my laptop needs to last a loooooooong time. Also docking station is must. Which set me back 239e. Only USB-C is connected to my laptop. I'm using mechanical keyboard for coding.

I replaced a faulty button+hinge on my ThinkPad. I ordered parts from Poland and the store paid me back. It's dead simple to do.
I think having a metal body instead of plastic is must.

As for BMI support. The speedup on chess engines is so minimal. It's propably worth +0.1 Elo. For code complexity. Having to support macro spaghetti...

[j.t.]

Sometimes you can buy relatively cheap used many-core Xeon CPUs. Like 32 threads for under 200$. So maybe an option could be to buy a good notebook for 500, maybe not with focus on good screen, materials, weight, instead of CPU corecount, and then build a PC for 500 using one of these high core CPUs.

I did that a few years back and it worked well. Two 12 thread CPUs made a lot of calculations faster. The only problem was, that because I got a server mainboard, it turned out to be really noisy. So I would advice to stay away from server boards.