On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 at 02:46:12PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: > > Apparently you are much better off on a Pentium or Athlon with > > i386 optimized code than i486 optimized one. > I vaguely recall something similar about the i586.
FWIK, almost everything that can be done in two ways on ix86, like loop / dec jnz and frame / sub ebp blah, is faster one way on i586 and the other on i686. Moreover, i586 gets most performance boost from keeping everything in registers, while i686 gets most from using registers and memory evenly (!) - I don't know whether compilers support these optimisations, though. So if there will be a split, it should IMO be to i386 and i686. Of course, if C++ progs are going to be broken anyway, dropping i386 might be viable - in that case we'll get i486 and i686. Just my two cents... -- personal contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED], +35841 5323835 work contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED], +35850 3678003 kotisivu (henkkoht): http://www.iki.fi/atehwa/ homepage (technical): http://sange.fi/~atehwa/