Hard disk performance

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

I would like to buy a hard disk Samsung 970 Pro 1TB M.2. I have a question. Is it worth buying it and what will be the disk performance for draughts such as Kingsrow, Damage, Dragon, Scan, Maximus , Sjende Blyn, Moby Dam and other draughts programs. I'm also interested in what the performance will be between this disk and a regular disk SSD. Thank you in advance for any feedback.

Krzysztof.

[Joost Buijs]

I would like to buy a hard disk Samsung 970 Pro 1TB M.2. I have a question. Is it worth buying it and what will be the disk performance for draughts such as Kingsrow, Damage, Dragon, Scan, Maximus , Sjende Blyn, Moby Dam and other draughts programs. I'm also interested in what the performance will be between this disk and a regular disk SSD. Thank you in advance for any feedback.

Krzysztof.

I have a few of these NVME drives in use (although 2TB), the tranfer-rate (random and sequential) is about 5 to 6 times as high as what you get from regular IDE SSDs. They are very useful for endgame databases, for other applications I don't see much difference. You are probably better off with the 970 Evo Plus, it is a lot cheaper and it has a somewhat higher random read-performance too (600.000 IOPS vs 500.000 IOPS).

Joost

[BertTuyt]

It also depends if all databases are preloaded in the DB cache at the start.
If this is the case, you might not see the advantage at all (only a faster initialization).
Damage has an option for preload of all 7P DBs (when cache is sufficient).
For Kingsrow with the 8P DB, then a fast SSD has certainly advantages.

Bert

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

I have a few of these NVME drives in use (although 2TB), the tranfer-rate (random and sequential) is about 5 to 6 times as high as what you get from regular IDE SSDs. They are very useful for endgame databases, for other applications I don't see much difference. You are probably better off with the 970 Evo Plus, it is a lot cheaper and it has a somewhat higher random read-performance too (600.000 IOPS vs 500.000 IOPS).
Joost

Thank you for your answer Joost. You disappointed me a little with this news. I wanted to see the difference when looking for a move and calculating a variant, for example during 1 second. Joost, what's your variant NVME on your motherboard?

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

It also depends if all databases are preloaded in the DB cache at the start.
If this is the case, you might not see the advantage at all (only a faster initialization).
Damage has an option for preload of all 7P DBs (when cache is sufficient).
For Kingsrow with the 8P DB, then a fast SSD has certainly advantages.

Bert

I would be happier if such a disk calculated more variants and movements than ordinary disks SSD.

[Joost Buijs]

I have a few of these NVME drives in use (although 2TB), the tranfer-rate (random and sequential) is about 5 to 6 times as high as what you get from regular IDE SSDs. They are very useful for endgame databases, for other applications I don't see much difference. You are probably better off with the 970 Evo Plus, it is a lot cheaper and it has a somewhat higher random read-performance too (600.000 IOPS vs 500.000 IOPS).
Joost

Thank you for your answer Joost. You disappointed me a little with this news. I wanted to see the difference when looking for a move and calculating a variant, for example during 1 second. Joost, what's your variant NVME on your motherboard?

The version of NVME is 1.3 the bus they are on is PCIe 4.0 x4, but the 970 Pro/Evo does not support that. Like Bert already said, they are useful for large EGDBs, but they wont increase your search speed during the opening/midgame when you're not accessing the EGDB.

If you want to calculate higher nodes per second, you have to switch to a faster CPU. I think you use the TR-1950X, recently I built a machine with a TR-3970X, on this machine with precision boost on (using 8 threads) Kingsrow 1.61 runs around 95 MNPS, so you can compare it with the TR-1950X. My own draughts program (using 32 threads) several times surpassed 500 MNPS on this machine, not that it matters much because with draughts at this level most games will end in a draw anyway.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Thank you for your answer Joost. It doesn't make sense to buy such a disk. And how does it relate to chess Joost.

[Joost Buijs]

Thank you for your answer Joost. It doesn't make sense to buy such a disk. And how does it relate to chess Joost.

For chess it's the same, it only helps with EGDBs. I have a few of these 2TB drives with Nalimov 6P (1.2 TB), syzygy 6P and Kingsrows EGDBs on them. In practice I only use Nalimov because it is depth to mate. EGDBs don't add much in strength, nowadays chess engines are so strong that they will find the right move in 99% of the cases without EGDB anyway. I guess it's the same with Draughts.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Thank you Joost. I have a huge request to you Joost. You wouldn't have made the Nalimov (6P) database available online.

[Joost Buijs]

Thank you Joost. I have a huge request to you Joost. You wouldn't have made the Nalimov (6P) database available online.

Krzysztof, I don't think my provider likes it when I upload 1.2 terabyte. I'm willing to put Nalimov 6P on a 1.5 TB portable hard-drive, but than you have to sent me one, or I can buy one for you locally, a WD Elements 1.5 TB costs 61 euro's at Amazon. If you are interested you may send me a PM.

As an alternative you can download them from here: http://kirill-kryukov.com/chess/tablebases-online/ Of course this will take ages, even with a very fast internet connection.

Joost

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Hi Joost,

sorry to ask you what you think about the chess disc Samsung 980 PRO 2TB. Which one do you think is better Samsung 980 PRO 2TB or Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 2TB.

Krzysztof

[Joost Buijs]

Hi Krzysztof,

It depends upon the computer you are going to use it for.

The 970 Evo plus is PCIe 3.0 and the 980 Pro is PCIe 4.0, so if you want to buy a new computer in the future that has PCIe 4.0 the 980 Pro will be a lot faster. For your current PCs with PCIe 3.0 it won't make much difference.

There are also other brand PCIe 4.0 SSD's that are very fast: e.g. Seagate FireCuda 530 and Western Digital Black SN850.

Joost

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Hi Joost,

Thank you so much Joost for the answer. As it reads, my motherboard supports PCI x4. I don't know if it's a good idea but I want to install two M.2 disks. One for draughts, the other for chess. At the moment, I have already bought a disk Western Digital Black SN850 and heat sink Be quiet MC1 Pro SSD Cooler M.2 2280. I can't put everything on one disk because there is not enough space.

[Joost Buijs]

Hi Joost,

Thank you so much Joost for the answer. As it reads, my motherboard supports PCI x4. I don't know if it's a good idea but I want to install two M.2 disks. One for draughts, the other for chess. At the moment, I have already bought a disk Western Digital Black SN850 and heat sink Be quiet MC1 Pro SSD Cooler M.2 2280. I can't put everything on one disk because there is not enough space.

Krzysztof,

PCIe x4 is not the same as PCIe 4.0, PCIe x4 means 4 serial channels and PCIe 4.0 is a new standard with twice the bandwidth.

Strange that your databases don't fit on a 2TB SSD, maybe you have multiple EGDB for Draughts installed. I use Nalimov and Syzygy for chess (both 6P) and all databases from Ed, all together they fit easily on a 2TB SSD. I don't use 7P Syzygy because it is too large for an SSD.

Joost

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Hi Joost,
in fact you are right I have Slot M.2 and it is written 3x M.2 32 Gb/s (PCIe 3.0 x4). Now I wonder what to do, give back or leave it. As for the draughts disc - these are Russian and international draughts.Therefore, the place is already running out.