Computer Speed and Chess Engines

What's gonna make my engine go faster? If I have an 8-core computer can i get the same depth in 1/4 of the time that a 2-core computer would?

Thanks!

Not according to this thread:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/best-cpu-for-chess-engine-game-analysis

So I would want more cores and more ram? more cores + more ram = more speed?

Here are my approximations (have written a chess engine a few times, so it is a little more than just guesses) 

Chess speed (in nodes per second) is very roughly proportional to core_speed * sqrt( nof_cores )

To reach a depth d you roughly have to process 3^d leaf nodes (depending on algorithm/engine, can be 2.5^d or even up to 6^d).

You do the math. More RAM helps if you can use it as hash; I never looked into a formula on hash size vs depth (the first 32-64kB in hash gives the largest bang for the byte, and then it diminishes for each extra byte added).

What is 'hash'?

Simply: The hash is used to "remember" positions the engine has already analyzed. There are huge amounts of transpositions when testing all move combinations. So the more positions the engine can "remember", the less double work it has to do.

Most engines have hash size as a parameter. The more memory, the bigger hash you can use. Using more hash is usually better, but the improvement gets smaller and smaller with size.

did you mean kb then? cuz I got 4 whole GBs. adding more ram might not be nessesary at this point if you did mean kb.

Use as much as you can afford. Some engines have separate hashes for each thread.

And yes, I really ment kB. But that only ment that the imrovement you get from going, say from NO hash to 1 MB is far far far more than the improvement you get from going from 1 MB to, say, 1 GB. Even if that is 1000 times the hash.  But you still get an improvement going to 1GB, probably noticable one.