Hi everyone. Apparently, the chess community believes that macs are handicapped when it comes chess calculation (in comparison to windows computers). They believe that macs are not optimized for chess as well as windows computers are. This is because macs are allegedly getting bad benchmark results in comparison to current windows intel i7/i9 and amd(ryzen) machines. Therefore, most chess professionals and enthusiasts only use a windows computer for chess analysis.
My theory is that the reason the macs are getting bad results is due to allocating more hash than macOS is willing to give as physical memory, resulting in virtual memory being used for hash, which in turn causes very bad performance. I believe that decreasing the size of the hash until only physical memory is used improves performance drastically.
I ask that members here run a couple of stockfish benchmark tests using their m3 max (14 and 16 core) and m2 max/pro (12 core) macbooks and then post the results here. I will report the findings to all the major chess sites.
The benchmark file (Stockfish M1 pop-neon) can be found here:
under Apple/Mac to the top right
You can also view the ranking list for many different processor/OS setups shown.
Once you download the file run the following commands for the 14-core (m3 max) machine
"bench 512 14 26 default depth nnue"
and then run the test again with this command
"bench 1024 14 26 default depth nnue"
The latter command uses more hash memory (1024MB instead of 512MB). I want to see if there is a drastic difference between the two.
For 16-core machines (m3 max) or for 12-core machines (m2 max/pro) just change the "14" in the command to a "16" or to a "12", respectively.
Thank you!
My theory is that the reason the macs are getting bad results is due to allocating more hash than macOS is willing to give as physical memory, resulting in virtual memory being used for hash, which in turn causes very bad performance. I believe that decreasing the size of the hash until only physical memory is used improves performance drastically.
I ask that members here run a couple of stockfish benchmark tests using their m3 max (14 and 16 core) and m2 max/pro (12 core) macbooks and then post the results here. I will report the findings to all the major chess sites.
The benchmark file (Stockfish M1 pop-neon) can be found here:
under Apple/Mac to the top right
You can also view the ranking list for many different processor/OS setups shown.
Once you download the file run the following commands for the 14-core (m3 max) machine
"bench 512 14 26 default depth nnue"
and then run the test again with this command
"bench 1024 14 26 default depth nnue"
The latter command uses more hash memory (1024MB instead of 512MB). I want to see if there is a drastic difference between the two.
For 16-core machines (m3 max) or for 12-core machines (m2 max/pro) just change the "14" in the command to a "16" or to a "12", respectively.
Thank you!
