ChessBase vs other chess engines

The best is houdini 4x pro

I think it comes down to whether you're more interested in buying a database for research or an engine for analysis.  ChessBase is the gold standard of databases but overkill if what you want is an engine for game analysis.  You need to do some more research and figure out what you want to do.  Here's a couple of forum searches that might help:

http://www.chess.com/forum/search?keyword=best+engine and

http://www.chess.com/forum/search?keyword=best+database

Also, there are free engines and database available so maybe that's all you need.  Of course older versions of Fritz come dirt cheap and might be what you need to get started.  I like HIARCS myself but also use ChessKing and Fritz.  Haven't found the need for a heavy duty database at my level but all three of the previous have DB functions.  I think HIARCS is the most "human" of the engines and DB searches are a snap.  The downside is you need more than 1 database so you're switching pretty frequently; not hard to do (a few mouseclicks) but some find it annoying.  Fritz has a steep learning curve but plenty of instruction on youtube.  ChessKing is the most fun of the three but "unique".  Good luck deciding on what to get...

OK, ChessBase is good for databases. It's less comfortable for using as chess GUI e.g. analyzing and/or playing. I think best free GUI is Arena and if you don't mind to pay - look at Aquarium - it's really great with its IDeA tool.

All this has nothing to do with engine, you can connect any engine to any GUI. Best engines are Houdini and Stockfish. I think Houdini is slightly better but it doesn't really matter untill really high level, and Stockfish is free...

SCID is pretty good too, it's open-source and enterily free to use.

Available on pretty much any platform, that is Windows, Linux, OSX and Android.

http://scid.sourceforge.net/

Droid fish is the best and free for opening preparations in an android tab or phone.It also has the strongest Stoc kfish

I have heard from some good players that Fritz is good. Rybka is also good.

You should get both the ChessBase database and one of the playing programs. They work well together. See http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2008/11/where-rubber-meets-road.html for an example of a training process that is only possible when you have both.

Thanks! Ziryab.