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We have now GPUs, Quad-cores, i7s, i5s, i3s, and so on. However, I am wondering what is the best chess engine for 1 CPU. ChessBase offers Fritz 11 for free. Fritz 11 works very well with 1 CPU. Also, Stockfish has many versions, which one is the best for 1 CPU? Same question for Komodo. Komodo 12 is free, but what is the best Komodo for 1 CPU?

I tried Stockfish 14.1 and put my computer in trouble, even though is a new desktop, but with a Celeron processor. (Intel(R) Celeron(R) J4105 CPU @ 1.50GHz). It is impossible to analyze in my computer with Stockfish 14 because the computer freezes. I tried to use Stockfish 9 and Stockfish 10 but I did not find them in the Stockfish website. I only found Stockfish 14.

Update 12/24

I installed the last free version of Komodo (Komodo 12), and it is running without freezing my computer. I can analyze with this engine without problems. The same with Fritz 11. However, Stockfish 14 freezes my computer.

I am running the chess engines over the free GUI ChessBase Reader 17. You can find it in the following link:

https://en.chessbase.com/post/chessbase-reader-2017

You can download the free version of Komodo from the website: https://komodochess.com/

Update 12/25/2021

I found the old versions of Stockfish!

  1. Go to https://stockfishchess.org/download/
  2. Other Versions (At the end of the page)
  3. Old (archived) releases of Stockfish

Fritz 1 CPU

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    Do you mean "best chess engine for 1 core?"
    – TheFakeGrandmaster
    Commented Dec 24, 2021 at 6:05
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    GPU is short for Graphics Processing Unit, which doesn't affect any calculations that engines do (CPU is what matters). Quad-core means a CPU has 4 cores. i7, i5, i3 is Intel's naming scheme for their CPUs
    – TheFakeGrandmaster
    Commented Dec 24, 2021 at 6:36
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    What is most likely meant is best single process, single thread chess engine. Even with only a single core you can run multiple processes and or threads - I am not saying this is a good idea here, I am just being a pedant.
    – Ian Bush
    Commented Dec 24, 2021 at 9:16
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    @justANewbie these days a major class of engines (Leela, Scorpio, Ara, etc) make use of GPU resources.
    – Allure
    Commented Dec 24, 2021 at 16:15
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    Stockfish 14.1 comes in two versions: one fast, but which requires a modern CPU (the AVX2 version), and one slower (the POPCNT version). You are probably trying the AVX2 version on a CPU that doesn't support AVX2 instructions -- try the POPCNT version instead.
    – user30536
    Commented Dec 25, 2021 at 6:32

1 Answer 1

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Stockfish is the unchallenged best CPU engine right now (it's most probably the best engine, period, as well). This applies regardless of the hardware you have, as long as it's a fair comparison - i.e. you run all your competing CPU engines on the same hardware.

Choose the latest version of Stockfish, or if you prefer, choose the latest stable release (v14.1).

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  • Hi! I tried Stockfish 14.1 and puts my computer in trouble, even though is a new one, but with a Celeron processor. (Intel(R) Celeron(R) J4105 CPU @ 1.50GHz). It is impossible to analyze with it because the computer freezes. I tried to use Stockfish 9 and Stockfish 10 but I did not find them in the Stockfish website. I only found Stockfish 14.
    – Beginner
    Commented Dec 24, 2021 at 16:17
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    @Beginner for technical assistance I'd recommend asking a Stockfish developer - groups.google.com/g/fishcooking?pli=1
    – Allure
    Commented Dec 24, 2021 at 16:19
  • Thank you for your advice!
    – Beginner
    Commented Dec 24, 2021 at 16:20
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    just set the number of cores. sf defaults to using all your cores, but you can tell it to only use 1
    – Oscar Smith
    Commented Dec 30, 2021 at 1:47
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    @Beginner The computer freezes because you give too much hash to the engine. The hash is the random access memory (RAM) of your computer. If the computer runs out of RAM because you gave everything to the engine, then other tasks, like e.g. the rendering of the chess GUI, which also require RAM, can not function anymore. So, do not give more than a quarter or half of what you have to the engine. E.g. if you have 8 GB RAM, give 2048 or 4096 MB hash (multiples of 2) to the engine. Then your computer does not freeze.
    – Nils Lindemann
    Commented Aug 22, 2022 at 19:29

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