I can’t verify this, but I was talking to someone on FICS and they said that Houdini 4 Extreme uses a modified Aquarium interface. The person also said it was really good.
I’ve never used the Aquarium interface, so I can’t comment on it, but I would presume it has some minor tweaks that make it somewhat better than the regular Aquarium interface. But I don’t know. One would presume any major upgrades would just be included in the regular interface, so I suspect it might be more of a overall presentation (graphical) that any real upgrades to its actual usefulness. Although they could probably invent a few tweaks that gives it just enough upgrades to allow them to capitalize on the “extreme” title.
Update: rumors is that Houdini 5 is just around the corner. heh.
That’s the price of progress. Chess engines is a cutthroat business. It’s free or open source engines vs commercial engines, and both sides have some heavy hitters.
FYI: on CCRL, Stockfish 5 is the current leader on CCRL all lists. Houdini is 2nd on the list.
I was wondering about the price difference between Houdini 4 Extreme and Houdini 4 Pro (multi processor edition, Fritz interface.)
The description of the Extreme version gives a lot of information, but it does NOT say it’s multiprocessor. Although it does say you can have “multiple instances of Houdini running”, it’s apparently only running on one core (or if you have more instances running than your available cores, then each instance would be competing for processor time.)
Just a “buyer beware” thing.
Although with Stockfish 5 as open source, it might be that one is getting the extreme houdini just for the interface, then install Stockfish 5 as it’s primary engine. I’ll probably end up getting the Aquarium interface for $25 sans any engines.
Ultimately I decided to get Deep Fritz 14, due to the cost. Since so many free/open source UCI engines are available that are better than Fritz, that was the more cost efficient way to get the Fritz 14 interface.
I might still get Houdini 4 pro on Aquarium in the future.
No idea. I know it’s 64 bit program. But I didn’t see the words “Stockfish 4” anywhere in the description. They did scrap the original Fritz programming line and used a new team to write something that’s in 64 bit. But if it’s based on Stockfish 4, I don’t know.
Reviews consistently say that Deep Fritz 14 isn’t anywhere near the level of play of say Houdini or Stockfish 5 or Kubodo. That being said, they still say it’s still a very strong program. I doubt that Magnus Carlson could win a match against it. He would have a better chance of winning a game or two compared to him playing against Stockfish 5, Houdini 4, or Komodo.