Draw!

An anonymous reader writes "Heise (publisher of the famous german computer magazine c't) started a most unusual CPU benchmark, today. A dual P4 Xeon 2400 and a dual AthlonMP 2000+ have to prove their abilities to ... play chess! The opponents are running two of the best chess AIs (Previews of Deep Fritz 7 and Shredder 6), so there are four different configurations. With each configuration about 55 matches (~24h) are played. As yet AMD/Fritz is leading, but the benchmark has just started. You can follow the duell online [Sorry, site is in german, but the graphics of the java-applet should be multi-lingual]. What's next? Who wouldn't like to see a Linux/Windows mine sweeper death match!"

Comments

Re:Eh?

[kervel]

not true. since computer chess is about searching trees, the fastest computer is able to search deeper in the tree and get a more accurate picture of the best move.
if you want more info about how chess computers
(and AI in general) work:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programmin g/featu res/chess1/
http://oellermann.com/cftchess/notes/ shortcuts.htm l

Re:explanation?

[tomstdenis]

Wrong. Get a clue. Each cpu gets 10 mins per GAME and 2 seconds per move.

The idea is that the faster cpu will beable to try out more moves before actually comitting to a move. More studying presumably means better chess.

Tom

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously cant understand how you people can sit there and say "how is this a benchmark??"

Are you kidding me???

If you cant see how this is a reasonable benchmark at all go back to grade school.

The simple fact is that the more grunt a computer has, the further a computer can see into the "future" in order to pick the best move. Personally, i think its a brilliant benchmark, and I would also suggest that it can be taken for granted that he'll be running all combinations of chess engine and cpu otherwise, it would all be pointless.

Re:Time is limited

[halftrack]

Machine means all hardware. In a chess game a machine who can't pull as many moves from RAM as it can process would have a disadvantage.

Re:explanation?

[tshak]

There is a reason that IBM's Deep Blue was not a P3 1Ghz - it needed tons of CPU power to compete with Kasparov. In theory, with the same chess engines, the faster computer will win the game each time. That is the point of these tests.

Also, considering the Athlon is rated at 2000, the P4 should win each time. It would be also be more beneficial to ignore said "ratings", and look at the budget. If they spent $5 building the P4, and $3K building the Athlon, then it's an unfair comparison because they weren't equal budgets. Unless, however practically useless, you want to see who has the fastest CPU regardless of price.