Re: changing CHOST in stage3 (was : [gentoo-user] default stage3)

["W.Kenworthy" <billk@iinet.net.au>]

To explain, keep in mind that optimisation and chost are two different
things.  

i386 is a "lowest common denominator" instruction set that will run on
most 386 and above x86 processors.  i4/5/686 adds few specialised
instructions and I believe the compiler is able to use them to produce
faster code in some cases.  The downside is the loss of compatibility -
apparent if you switch processors.  Is the system faster - my tests
(done ages ago now) say yes, but not by much and its highly dependent on
the actual code/data in use at the time.  

Generally, you will get more gain by smarter configuration, better
software etc.  Thats not to say optimised CFLAGS and compiler choices
wont give a useful speedup, especially when crunching data.  It just
wont turn a 667Mhz P3 into the equivalent 1G P3 - I know I recently
tried to "get a little more" out of one :)

BillK

On Wed, 2005-11-23 at 21:24 -0400, Robin wrote:
> > > Wouldn't leaving the CHOST at
> > > "i386-pc-linux-gnu" build unoptimized binaries?
> >
> > No.
> >
> > Alexander Skwar
> 
> Thanks for that. My CHOST flag is set to i386-pc-linux-gnu even though
> it is not.  Just a piece of mind I guess not building unoptimized
> binaries.
> 
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list