Computer Chess Benchmark List
There are many CPU benchmark websites that measure the performance of your computer such as PassMark that can compare 3 CPU's at the same time. But what do they actually measure? and what does it mean for the speed of a chess program? For single thread performance the site reports:
Intel Core i7-860 @ 2.80GHz | Intel Core i7-8700 @ 3.20GHz | Intel Xeon E5630 @ 2.53GHz |
1229 | 2630 | 1113 |
Does this automatically mean the i7-8700 will perform a factor of 2630/1229=2.13 faster than the i7-860 for chess engines? Let's find out. And create a simple benchmark and report the results in the below contact form.
The rules
1. Make sure that as less as possible software is running in the background.
2. Download and unzip bench and double click CPU-1 which will start the Stockfish 9 build-in benchmark.
3. Check if the total number of nodes exactly matches 81.858.477
4. If the number is correct contribute the Nodes/second in the contact form below.
If you want to contribute to multithreading alo then repeat steps 1-4 with CPU-4 | CPU-8 | CPU-16. Note that contrary to single thread there are no fixed nodes numbers in multi-threading.
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Computer Chess Benchmark List
Numbers are listed as NPS/1000
Processor | Cores | Turbo | Hyper threading | NPS 1 CPU | NPS 4 CPU | NPS 8 CPU | NPS 16 CPU |
Intel Core i7-860 @2.80GHz | 4 | on | yes | 1840 | 4998 | 7.858 | |
Intel Xeon E5630 @2.53GHz | 8 | off | yes | 1374 | 5499 | 10.429 | 13.578 |
Intel Xeon E5-2680 v2 @2.80GHz | 20 | on | yes | 2012 | 7307 | 12.483 | 25.627 |
Intel Xeon X5670 @2.93GHz | 12 | on | no | 1828 | 6874 | 13.339 | |
Intel Core i7-5820K @3.30GHz | 6 | on | yes | 1724 | 6802 | 12.340 | |
Intel Core i5-4690K @3.5GHz | 4 | off | no | 2144 | |||
Intel Core i7-4930K @3.4GHz | 6 | on | yes | 2161 | 8220 | 12.974 | 14.784 |
Intel Core i7-6950X @3.8GHz | 10 | off | yes | 2336 | 9200 | 18.153 | 26.431 |
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X @4.0GHz | 16 | off | yes | 2215 | 8512 | 16.664 | 33.274 |
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 @3GHz | 8 | on | no | 2011 | 7029 | 14.076 | |
Intel Core i7-6700HQ @2.6 GHz | 4 | on | yes | 1930 | 6391 | 8.508 | |
Intel Core i7-5960X @3.80GHz | 8 | off | yes | 2263 | 8828 | 17.077 | 21.174 |
Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3 @3.40GHz | 4 | on | yes | 2235 | 7633 | 10.708 | |
Intel Core i5-4460 @3.20GHz | 4 | on | no | 1960 | 7403 | ||
Intel Core i7-6700K @4.00GHz | 4 | off | yes | 2535 | 8684 | ||
Intel Core i9-8950HK @ 2.9 GHz | 6 | on | yes | 2654 | 8948 | 13.739 |
And now we compare some of the chess bench numbers
with the PassMark bench numbers
to answer the questions above.
Processor | Age | PassMark 1 CPU | Chess |
Intel Core i7-860 @ 2.80GHz | 2009 | 1229 | 1840 |
Intel Core i5-4690K @3.5GHz | 2014 | 2237 | 2144 |
Intel Core i7-860 @ 2.80GHz | 2009 | 1229 | 1840 |
Intel Core i7-6700HQ @ 2.6 GHz | 2015 | 1800 | 1930 |
Comment |
While the PassMark almost has doubled the NPS for a chess program by far has not, it's only 20%. |
While the PassMark indicates a 50% speed increase for a chess program it's only 5%. |
In other words, CPU benchmarks websites like PassMark can not be trusted for chess programs and the Intel
hardware progress since 2009 for chess is disappointing.
Click to enlarge
Remarks
To identify your hardware download CoreTemp and run it.
Turbo=off can be recognized if the (red marked) frequency is a constant number. If the number fluctuates Turbo=on.
Hyperthreading=off can be recognized if the (green marked) number of cores and threads is equal else Hyperthreading=on.
Technical
Note that CPU-1 runs the 42 positions at depth=20 and CPU-4|8|16 at depth=21
Credits
Stockfish 9 by T. Romstad, M. Costalba, J. Kiiski, G. Linscott is GPL, its home is located here.
Other sources of useful information are Adam's blog running the Stockfish 8 benchmark test, SedatChess and IpmanChess.