Stockfish! What is really better? Faster Cores? More Cores?, and NPS vs. Time to Depth.

In this example we are showing the results using the bench command in Stockfish 22071318. The current release of Stockfish.

We will be comparing a AMD 2950X 16 core, 32 thread CPU (desktop) , and a AMD R9 5900HX 8 core, 16 thread CPU (laptop)

AMD 2950X current price on Amazon $979.99
AMD 5900HX current price on Amazon $389.99

Desktop CPU monster vs Laptop CPU.

Here we go!

Stockfish Benchmark command used in the test.
Bench (Hash tables.) (Threads used in the test.) (Depth of search for each position of the benchmark.)

Test 1.

Bench 1024 1 26

2950x
Total time (ms) : 286223
Nodes searched  : 490192499
Nodes/second    : 1712624

5900HX
Total time (ms) : 199032
Nodes searched  : 490192499
Nodes/second    : 2462882

Winner 5900HX.

Test 2.

Bench 1024 2 26

2950X
Total time (ms) : 202620
Nodes searched  : 678674591
Nodes/second    : 3349494

5900HX
Total time (ms) : 144147
Nodes searched  : 718820450
Nodes/second    : 4986718

Winner 5900HX.

And winner 5900HX 1 core vs 2950X 2 cores.
Even with the 2950x 2 cores searching many more NPS.

Test 3.

Bench 1024 4 26

2950X
Total time (ms) : 159297
Nodes searched  : 1145855081
Nodes/second    : 7193199

5900HX
Total time (ms) : 127257
Nodes searched  : 1247612861
Nodes/second    : 9803883

Winner 5900HX.

And winner 5900HX 2 cores vs 2950x 4 cores.
Even with the 2950x searching many more NPS.

Test 4.

Bench 1024 8 26

2950X
Total time (ms) : 136948
Nodes searched  : 1881734235
Nodes/second    : 13740501

5900HX
Total time (ms) : 99501
Nodes searched  : 2035033372
Nodes/second    : 20452391

Winner 5900HX.

And winner 5900HX 4 cores vs 2950X 8 cores.
Even with the 2950X searching many more NPS.

And now we run the 2950X at full power with all 16 cores.
Can it overtake the much cheaper 5900HX with only 8 cores?

Test 5.

Bench 1024 16 26.

2950X
Total time (ms) : 129677
Nodes searched  : 3077330368
Nodes/second    : 23730733

Winner 5900HX 8 cores vs 2950X 16 cores.
Even with the 2950X searching many more NPS

Winner 5900HX 4 cores vs 2950X 16 cores.
Even with the 2950X 16 cores searching 23.7 Mnps vs 5900HX 4 cores searching 9.8 Mnps.

That's pretty odd man.

Turbo on on both comps?

Admin wrote:

That's pretty odd man.

Turbo on on both comps?

Yes, both computers are running at full speed. I run no other way.

Cinebench R23 scores.

2950x 18,500
5900HX 12,500

And not really that odd. That explains the scaling issues I have posted on here with Stockfish.

Stockfish likes fewer cores, and the faster the better. Anything more is a waste of power.

And if you use more cores the times get worse.

That is why people were going nuts on my channel. As my 16 cores CPU was out searching, Chess.com, TCEC, and Nav. That are using massive amounts of slower CPU cores.

As they only think NPS matters.