Best CPU for chess engine game analysis

Apols for resurrecting an old Thread, but I'm trying to get into correspondence/centaur chess more seriously'

In 2020 what do you need as a chess UI?

Is Arena sufficient and how does it compare to Fritz or Aquarium?

Any insights would be appreciated.

Thanks for the reply, I have an old version of Fritz which I use for databases but when analysing with modern engines like Stockfish my rather ancient computer slows to a crawl and can't be used for anything else.

I haven't tried Scid v PC, but was thinking of initially trying Arena to see if it was less resource hungry than Fritz.

How important is hardware, do I need a new machine?

How about AMD Threadripper 3970X? I am using it 32 cores and 64 threads. Which engine is best for it?

Spitting your money on both CPU and GPU is the best idea!!

The strongest engine is the combination of Leela on 2080 Ti plus Stockfish on 16 cores cpu ( as Stockfish SMP is poor beyond 16 cores, you dont get double benefits from 16 to 32 corrs  32 to 64 cores, instead +30 %, +20% etc). And Leela has been praised by 2015 iccf champ as if perfect Tablebase in opening.

Here is also one test who split the phase of two engines.

Stockfish codes had been modified  40,000 + times and tested  2 billions + games, one of the most fine tuned program in the world.

It is not due to the weakness of program, it is due to nature of search.  In initial position, there are 20 possible moves, but SF search mostly 2-3 promising moves ( branches) and keep searching deeper and deeper. 

If you have 20 cpu, 3 cpu will be searching for the most promising moves like 1. e4 or 1. d4 or 1. Nf3 ( the other 17 possible moves like 1. g4 1. f3 etc will be almost excluded in search from AB pruning except a small short nodes search).

Because of Alpha Beta pruning system, parallel search in massive CPU is not that useful. 

And also due to the nature of chess, the search trees will  be overlapping somewhere. For example,

CPU A is searching 1. e4 c5 2.Nf3

CPU B is searching 1. Nf3 c5 3. e4

And now you see the two search trees become overlap, wasting the power of 1 CPU.

 Xeon 2697 v2(12 core CPU) is still strong for chess?

Which is better for Stockfish? Ryzen 9 5950 or Intel 12900K?

I had an 8-core AMD Bulldozer back when I was working at the Tactics School, and I LOVED it.

For the price, it's almost impossible to beat.

It eventually blew a power supply and I bought a new i5 rig, but I still remember that 8-core AMD with fondness.

Someone answer please.

better and fast intel 12900k

This is the primary function of the engine framework for the neural networking of Lc0. The search protocols utilize the GPU for calculations. 

Carlsen, Caruana, and Nepo rented cloud engines to prepare for their World Championship matches. A cloud engine reaches 10^9 nodes/s, that is 1000 x faster than your desktop and 100 x faster than the top CPU discussed here.

Cloud engines seems more economical than buying expensive CPU like Threadripper. The TR is Overkill for  office, home and gaming application..

 I dont think anybody needs a Threadripper to analyse their games at amateur level. When you carry out engine analysis on your games, what you want is depth. 

 And the processor determines how fast you get to that depth. It's not that the lines Stockfish 15 will offer you at 35 depth will be lower quality if you were using a dual core processor compared to a Threadripper. It's just it will take longer for an ancient dual core to reach 35 depth, that is all. 

 For example I have recently upgraded my gaming rig to a 5950X from AMD, and it's great for reaching higher depths in shorter time, I use it a lot for my Daily chess analysis from Gameknot. Previously, a 3900X was good enough too. 

 I also own a 3950X in my Debian Linux box, and it is just as good for chess analysis.

Just curious. Anyone have 6 men EGTB installed in their PC and phone. How long does it takes to calculate a 50 move checkmate?

#46
To analyse amateur games an ordinary laptop or desktop is enough, but for ICCF correspondence chess or grandmaster preparation a cloud engine may be most economical: rent a top engine instead of buy a mediocre engine.
#47
You can access cloud syzygy 7-men endgame table bases from PC and phone.

#49
They play 5 days per move in the ICCF world championship.
One such tournament means 16 games at the same time and lasts for about 2 years.
With 3 tournaments at the same time that may lead up to 48 games.
They use more than one engine for one game for different perspectives.
So they run several threadripper style engines in their basement.
Cloud engines may be more efficient and less costly.

@tygxc

What is the recommended CPU and GPU for Video Editing and CAD? Surely they don't need Threadripper and RTX 3090Ti.