Vargo wrote:All these time parity matches are 5min per game and per side, so, it's a bit more than 2 sec per move (with 1x1080), which corresponds roughly to 800 visits for #176, and to 3200 visits for #157.
I think in this visit range more search still beats better search. There are around 300 candidate MOVES in a position, so (even if most of them are pruned) this doesn't mean a significantly deep search. Looking a bit deeper is more valuable than the order you FIRST look at the moves (which is all network strength is about).
So in this range I won't expect to see a spectacular improvement between successive networks even if they actually improve. Just lowering official matches from 3200 to 1600 visits had a noticeable negative effect (results more random, promotions scarcer even on a new size).
Anyway, I've begun a new 157 v 176 match, with 2x1080Ti, 12800 visits for 157 and 3200 visits for 176, which should be approximately at time parity (I'll check, with the .dat)
Thanks, this will be interesting. I never saw a statistically significant 40b vs 15b match at more realistic time controls (someone posted similar results on github but also only 1-2 sec/move).
OC testing like this is faster, but if someone uses LZ for serious analysis, he probably would allow at least 10-20 sec per move on 1080ti (nearly 10k visits - which is where search quality should start to overcome the visit disadvantage). And the tournaments these high block nets were first used saw much more visits. On the other hand it is good to know that users with weaker hardware are better off with 15 blocks for now. There probably will be unofficial 15b nets trained on 40 block selfplay data in the future as well.
