Chessbase: how to reduce CPU consumption

My home PC is now a dinosaur, and the default settings of Houdini 3 seriously slow it down, especially if other programs are running. With help from Steffen Giehring of Chessbase, I have created a new engine which only uses 1 of my machines 2 CPUs.

The way to do this is not intuitive, so details are given below.

If you want to reduce the number of CPUs to only one permanently you must „create a new UCI engine“.

Start the program and go to Engine – Create UCI Engine:

That will open a new dialog box.

Click the file search button on the top.

That will bring up a file select box. Select your Houdini 3 exe file from your hard disk and confirm with OK.

Now enter a new engine name like this {this screen print was from Steffen: in my machine, x64 is w32a}

Click on 'parameter' and change 'thread' to 1, and complete with „OK“.

Now you will have a Houdini 3 with 1 CPU engine right in your engine list!

I then clicked on file, options, selected the engines tab, clicked on Default Engine, and changed it to Houdini 3 w32 1 CPU.

Sorted!

Though, I am still hoping to soon sneak the purchase of a new modern spec high powered computer past Jane…

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