I was gone for a few days and I come back and read over the post and I just can't understand where this "Torque doesn't matter" theory comes from....... It takes Torque to cut wood...... To cut wood, it takes a force to pull the chain through the wood. This force comes from the sprocket. As it turns, the teeth exert a force on the chain and pulls it through the wood. This force is a distance r from the center of the shaft- where r is the radius of the sprocket. This force and distance r = TORQUE. The engine has to produce Torque to overcome the resistance of the wood-no matter what the cutting speed is. To cut fast, you need sufficient torque to overcome the load and high rpm. The "No Torque Theory" just doesn't cut it!
Then they say its all about raw HP- I assume raw means a high value. That makes more sense, but look at the equation... HP= T x rpm x c , T is torque, c is a constant( who cares what it is). So when the saw is cutting wood the only reason it produces a high value of HP is because it produces enough torque to overcome the load and it does it at a high rpm. Their "Raw HP" theory talks like torque doesn't have anything to do with it, but it does.
The only thing I can think of is they're writing down equations and Torque cancels out so then then they conclude "Torque doesn't matter". Something has to pull the chain through the wood- that something is Torque!
Maybe they've looked at graphs of Torque and HP from a dyno test. Maybe as rpms increase the Torque dropped but the HP increased, which I suppose can happen, I'm not that familar with these graphs. So maybe they say, Torque decreased so it quit doing the job and the high HP took over. Or maybe they're trying to say the high rpm part of it is more important than Torque- I don't know, but still to cut wood you have to have a sufficient amount of Torque to over come the Load. Bottom line... it takes TORQUE to cut wood!