M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

Discussion of anything and everything relating to chess playing software and machines.

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BetaPro
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Re: M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

Post by BetaPro »

Milos wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:08 am
BetaPro wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:06 am
Milos wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:01 am
Ras wrote: Sat Feb 27, 2021 4:02 pm
Ckappe wrote: Sat Feb 27, 2021 3:26 pmWell..the 4900H supports iGPU
But you will not find a laptop that has the 4900H and iGPU only - not even as advertised model, let alone in one that you could actually order right now.
Just take 5980HX based laptop. It's literally worlds apart from anything Apple has to offer. Like comparing a Ferrari to a Hyundai. :lol:
If by ferrari, you mean how it will catch fire, then sure.
The only company notoriously infamous for having laptops catching fire is Apple. Cupertino sect members, aka isheep are really hilarious.


Yes, due to previous products having x86 crap lol
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Ras
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Re: M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

Post by Ras »

Milos wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:01 amJust wait a month or two and take 5980HX based laptop.
I just bought a 4700U laptop, and given the increasing industry-wide supply chain problems on the one hand, and AMD's particular supply problems on the other hand, I'm happy with a laptop that I actually have over one that I could only admire online. I don't even care that much whether Apple's M1 is better because I just won't pay their insane SSD price, their equally insane RAM price, and then even be unable to run Linux properly.
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Re: M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

Post by Milos »

Ras wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:27 am
Milos wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:01 amJust wait a month or two and take 5980HX based laptop.
I just bought a 4700U laptop, and given the increasing industry-wide supply chain problems on the one hand, and AMD's particular supply problems on the other hand, I'm happy with a laptop that I actually have over one that I could only admire online. I don't even care that much whether Apple's M1 is better because I just won't pay their insane SSD price, their equally insane RAM price, and then even be unable to run Linux properly.
There is plenty of 5700U laptops available on stock atm. Sure it's Zen2, but they are faster and a bit better optimized than 4700U. You can even get 13'' one like Asus ZenBook 13 with 1GB SSD for the price of practically MacBook Air 13'' M1.
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Re: M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

Post by Milos »

BetaPro wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:13 am
Milos wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:08 am
BetaPro wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:06 am
Milos wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:01 am
Ras wrote: Sat Feb 27, 2021 4:02 pm
Ckappe wrote: Sat Feb 27, 2021 3:26 pmWell..the 4900H supports iGPU
But you will not find a laptop that has the 4900H and iGPU only - not even as advertised model, let alone in one that you could actually order right now.
Just take 5980HX based laptop. It's literally worlds apart from anything Apple has to offer. Like comparing a Ferrari to a Hyundai. :lol:
If by ferrari, you mean how it will catch fire, then sure.
The only company notoriously infamous for having laptops catching fire is Apple. Cupertino sect members, aka isheep are really hilarious.


Yes, due to previous products having x86 crap lol
Yeah right, Apple's fabulous thermal management had nothing to do with it :lol:.
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Re: M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

Post by Ckappe »

towforce wrote: Sat Feb 27, 2021 11:56 pm I haven't read the whole thread - is there a conclusion? Does a light laptop with an Apple M1 SOC get roughly the same amount of analysis on one charge as a laptop with a heavy battery and big power-hungry CPU? Or is it just too difficult to compare?

Edit: the post that appeared while I was writing this (see above) seems to indicate that in this particular game, a power-hungry AMD CPU with a heavy battery would be the winner.
Conclusion is that the higher-end laptop with bigger battery wins hands down. running the same SF13 code it does approx 2x nodes analyzed before battery runs out..and due to the bigger battery stamina is only about 30% less at full throttle, despite much faster Ryzen 9 CPU :-) )
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Re: M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

Post by Ckappe »

Ckappe wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:39 am
towforce wrote: Sat Feb 27, 2021 11:56 pm I haven't read the whole thread - is there a conclusion? Does a light laptop with an Apple M1 SOC get roughly the same amount of analysis on one charge as a laptop with a heavy battery and big power-hungry CPU? Or is it just too difficult to compare?

Edit: the post that appeared while I was writing this (see above) seems to indicate that in this particular game, a power-hungry AMD CPU with a heavy battery would be the winner.
Conclusion is that the higher-end laptop with bigger battery wins hands down. running the same SF13 code it does approx 2x nodes analyzed before battery runs out..and due to the bigger battery stamina is only about 30% less at full throttle, despite much faster Ryzen 9 CPU :-) )
And due to M1s relatively weak GPU analyzing with GPU engines like LC0, Ceres, Allie etc. the difference becomes abysmal for those use-cases..

Never trust a company that solders a limited lifespan component like the SSD to the logic board.. .. .. sigh... :P
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Re: M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

Post by BetaPro »

Milos wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:38 am Yeah right, Apple's fabulous thermal management had nothing to do with it :lol:.
It did, but guess what, with a better chip, it can literally remove the fan and still keep it cool.
Last edited by BetaPro on Sun Feb 28, 2021 7:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

Post by BetaPro »

This is Ckappe's laptop


He's comparing that huge thing to an ultrabook with no fan in it...
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Re: M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

Post by AlexChess »

name nodes/m NPS depth/m time/m moves time
1. Cfish 170221 64 NEON 496616K 10096446 49.8 49.2 64.6 3177.5
2. CorChess NNUE 1.3 240221 374848K 7342024 44.9 51.1 71.0 3624.9
3. Dragon by Komodo Chess 64-bit 177304K 4035783 34.6 43.9 86.0 3778.2
4. Lc0 v0.27.0+git.unknown 1160K 19899 12.3 58.3 43.0 2506.1
5. Ethereal 12.75 (POPCNT) 702334K 10063043 32.1 69.8 49.0 3419.9
6. Igel 2.9.0 CUSTOM 332547K 6477822 31.0 51.3 71.0 3644.9

Some benchmarks using only 4 CPUs. Silent fan. (I don't want to burn my fabulous Mac mini M1)

Of the whole discussion, I'm only worried by the soldered SSD stressed by 6-man tablebases :-)

PS Waiting M2, M3 (and why not? next Intel hybrids or Qualcomm BAREBONE solutions) I love MINI Unix based ARM systems and I'll never return to obsolete platforms.
Chess engines and dedicated chess computers fan since 1981 :D macOS Sequoia 16GB-512GB, Windows 11 & Ubuntu ARM64.
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towforce
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Re: M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

Post by towforce »

Ckappe wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 1:11 am
Ckappe wrote: Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:39 am
towforce wrote: Sat Feb 27, 2021 11:56 pm I haven't read the whole thread - is there a conclusion? Does a light laptop with an Apple M1 SOC get roughly the same amount of analysis on one charge as a laptop with a heavy battery and big power-hungry CPU? Or is it just too difficult to compare?

Edit: the post that appeared while I was writing this (see above) seems to indicate that in this particular game, a power-hungry AMD CPU with a heavy battery would be the winner.
Conclusion is that the higher-end laptop with bigger battery wins hands down. running the same SF13 code it does approx 2x nodes analyzed before battery runs out..and due to the bigger battery stamina is only about 30% less at full throttle, despite much faster Ryzen 9 CPU :-) )
And due to M1s relatively weak GPU analyzing with GPU engines like LC0, Ceres, Allie etc. the difference becomes abysmal for those use-cases..

Thanks. This makes sense: the M1 SOC is, IMO, an absolutely STUNNING piece of technology, even by today's standards, and Apple deserve kudos for creating it. However, it's not really surprising that a low powered lightweight laptop created from it is not optimised for this particular comparison, and it's also not surprising that it can't win it.

Apologies if this is actually already happening, but I hope the manufacturers of computers that use other operating systems (especially Windows and Chrome OS) take note and start using SOCs in place of CPUs (though obviously they can't buy an SOC as good as the Apple M1 right now).
Human chess is partly about tactics and strategy, but mostly about memory