[Mageia-dev] i686 must be Pentium II ?

Sinner from the Prairy sinnerbofh at gmail.com
Sun Sep 26 19:16:49 CEST 2010


On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 7:05 AM, Thomas Backlund <tmb at iki.fi> wrote:

(...)

> So, where does that leave us?
>
> Simple.
> For 32bit installs, we will still support i586 as base.
> For 64bit installs, it's simple as x86_64 is SSE2 by default.

(...)

> And many of the users wanting i686/sse2 already have hardware capable of
> running x86_64, so that's what they should do, as there is where the future
> is.

I've been reading this thread all along, and this is the most sensible option:

* leave i586 for 32-bit CPUs
* if you want real change, use 64 bit x86_64

This is the only realistic target for compilers.

The differences between i586 vs i686 vs using SSE or SSE2 or.....
leaves out of Mageia way too many supported CPUs, with no clear
advantage in performance with the new compiler target.

For a real difference, go 64 bits and that's it.

I remember a review made before 64bits compilers that uncovered that:

i586 was noticeable faster than i386
i686 made no real difference to i586
Gentoo laser-precission target made no real difference to i586


Salut,
Sinner
-- 
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