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I am actually drilling methodically several lines (1...e5 and 1...e6 2...d5 but the question won't depend on that) of the english opening, using ChessBase 15 fast reference search.

The qualifier "fast" is from ChessBase as I am facing really bizarre behaviour, more precisely : I highlight the "Reference" window and start playing moves on the board, and then, even for the first moves (even the very first) I have lags. After the 4th or 5th move the lags are huge and the reference window is really slow to refresh.

Plus, if I change to "Notation" window and come back to "Reference" window then the window is empty and stays empty. I sometimes succeed in making it refresh (and being non empty) by taking back the last move and replaying it, sometimes not. By the way, I am not totally convinced by the fact that the results in this windows are put in some cache so that the whole result in the window is re-searched again. (Yes, really).

Two facts :

  • one playing against me : my reference database it a fully up to date Mega Database 2020 with 8.1M games ; I can conceive that searching in a fairly big database can take time (but cache should be used and I hope/guess it is used, but then I don't understand the behaviour I am facing)
  • one playing for me : I have a machine with quite aggressive specs : Intel Core i7 7700K CPUs @4.2Ghz, 32GB RAM, 2x GeForce GTX 1080Ti all supported by an MSI Z270 Gaming pro carbon (that I don't use for gaming though, ah ah)

Has anyone experienced such a behaviour ?

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I have the same behavior for both parts of your question, and the first behavior (the slowness to populate the reference) is by necessity since it has to search all 8 million games to populate the "Reference" window. The second behavior is just a bug, but I will tell you how to refresh it.

Regarding the slowness of populating the "Reference" pane, I want to make sure that you have done two things:

  1. Gone to File>Activation>Update program, and that you are running the latest build.
  2. And this, which may be exacerbate your problem: Right-click on the Mega 2020 Database, and go to Tools, and "Delete Search Booster". Then "Create Search Booster". I do this every time I add new games.

To refresh the "Reference" pane after coming back to it, just play any move, and if necessary, then go back to the previous move. You can also click on the "Openings Book" tab, among others, and then go back to the "reference", and it will refresh.

I agree that it is not cached, and re-searched, but with the search booster and now that the database has been read into memory, for me, it only takes under a second for the refresh.

P.S. Go into File>Options>Limits, and set the "Cache Size Reference DB" to at least 6GB since right now, it is barely over 5GB. That way, once you read through it once, it will all be cached in memory.

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  • P.S. Since you can have ChessBase on up to three different computers, I have it on two, and it happens on both...it is not a coincidence.
    – PhishMaster
    Mar 23, 2020 at 9:47
  • Well I have it on top of three, two beasts and one laptop and I have the issue on all three. Now I indeed have the last build of chessbase 15, and I did the delete/create search booster (because I recently update the mega database 2020). It improved the whole thing a bit. 1.c4 e6 2. b3 and it took (on the aforementionned pc) 8s for displaying the possible answers.
    – Olórin
    Mar 23, 2020 at 9:55
  • Regarding the cache, I am still baffled that they don't cache, even with the search booster. I mean it just costs extra ram, which is not infinitely abundent I know ,so that they could start caching when you advance a bit in the variations (and then have a smaller game tree to cache and less memory needed)
    – Olórin
    Mar 23, 2020 at 9:58
  • I agree that they should do that, so I am baffled too. I also did just add an important P.S. to my original answer.
    – PhishMaster
    Mar 23, 2020 at 10:05
  • Yeah, thx for the PS, but I indeed raise the limit to 8GB as it was by default set at less that 3Gb, but it didn't help me a lot. I am not for unconstructive criticism but I simply don't understand why such an expensive set up (chessbase 15 + megadatabase) is so much blurry, looking and being executed with UI that looks like it has never really being improved since 10Y.
    – Olórin
    Mar 23, 2020 at 10:21

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