#hardware performance
Could a Modern Engine on a Pentium Have Beaten Kasparov?
7/10nicholas.carlini.com · ⭐️ 7/10 · 2026-11-04
A new article examines whether a modern chess engine running on 1990s Pentium-class hardware could have defeated Garry Kasparov in 1996. It uses the counterfactual to explore how much of modern chess-engine strength comes from algorithmic improvements in evaluation and search versus gains from raw hardware performance.