* Oliver Jones <oliver(a)deeper.co.nz> [2004-05-24 11:52]:
Something that should also be taken into account is that GCC is far from the best optimising C/C++ compiler out there. The Intel and Microsoft compilers are probably able to squeeze in the order of 20-30% more performance out of some code. If the marketing is to be believed at least. I would estimate (without any emperical data) that they probably produce executables that are 10% faster overall.
The Microsoft compiler is not impressive at all. Intel's offerings are much better, but they're only in the 10% range in realworld tests. GCC has been getting better as well, so ICC's advantage is generally only in single-digit percentages at the time of writing. Of course, in certain highly specific scenarios (excercising cache and floating point math) it can produce code twice as fast as GCC's, but that's basically the domain of scientific number crunching and doesn't have any appreciable impact on the desktop. -- Regards, Aristotle "If you can't laugh at yourself, you don't take life seriously enough."