[GRLUG] Pentium 4 and Gentoo Linux?

[Kyle]

On 06/19/2013 08:44 PM, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> On Wed, 2013-06-19 at 18:11 -0500, Philip Robar wrote:
>> I’m hoping that someone, like Mike Mol - our resident Gentoo advocate,
>> might know the answer to this (and save me hours of experimenting):
>> Will compiling Gentoo specifically for Intel P4/Netburst with GCC,
>> Intel or LLVM make a noticeable difference on a general purpose
>> desktop as opposed to using a generically compiled distribution?
> I know next to nothing about Gentoo... but I'd be willing to wager lunch
> that the answer is "No way, no difference".  I've seen more bugs
> introduced by eager-to-optimize setups than I have performance
> improvements.  Compiler optimization performance improvements are pretty
> much limited to code written specifically to demonstrate they make
> things go faster.
>
> Note that you said ****"difference on a general purpose desktop"***.
> Special cases, especially those involved math / real-data-processing
> might be different, but a "general purpose desktop"... no way, no
> difference.  You're more likely to break something.
>
> [snip]


Can't answer for Netburst, either, but I can say that I run Gentoo and
haven't seen much of a change in performance with compiling specifically
for my CPU (an i7) over a generic x86_64 build.  However, Gentoo lets
you compile out all kinds of junk you don't want or use by changing your
USE flags, and that, for me anyway, makes a significant difference in
speed and power consumption vs. a generic "cram every feature in, just
in case it's ever needed" build.

- Kyle