RE: .i368 vs .i586

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc cu-portland edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poletti, Don [mailto:don.poletti@comverse-in.com]
> Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2000 9:25 AM
> To: 'Gnome List'
> Subject: .i368 vs .i586
> 
> 
> Doe anybody know how much of a performance inprovement there is
> to compiling gnome for 586 (pentium).

Some, depending on how you configure your compiler options.  One of these
days I'm going to find/install PGCC to see if that makes any difference over
whatever ships with RH61.  Some things get more of an improvement than
others, and some (pixmaps) are slow no matter what.  

> 
> Is it reasonable to say that GNOME requires a pentium and that all
> rpms and other prepackaged binaries be made for 586? If someone
> really wanted to run on a 486 then they would have to compile 
> it themselves.
> Or is this too much of a burden for 486 Gnomers? (if they exist)

The "standard" for creating RPMs is to use a flag that says "optimize" for
the 486 processor, but do NOT make it incompatible with other processors.  I
haven't seen what kind of a difference change it from i486 to i586 processor
would make, but perhaps somebody could try that.  It's not that hard to
re-compile RPMs to be specific for whatever processor you have, it just
takes a little time.  You could easily set them up to build overnight, while
you're not using your computer.  Something to note, unless YOU change things
in your rpm config, then building for i586 or i686 will make 0 difference
over the stock i386 RPMs.  

> 
> Non-Gnome question but related to above. Why does the default seem to
> be i386 and i686 when there are a lot of plan old pentium machines out
> there?

Well, I'd ask RedHat, or the RPM list, but I haven't been able to figure it
out either.
	Greg