Benchmarks

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.

 
 
 
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