On Tuesday 25 February 2003 09:27 am, flacycads wrote: > My main complaint (really about the only one) about Mandrake is that they > apparently refuse to issue an Athlon-XP optimized version for retail sales, > or download. However, at least you can rebuild the srpms yourself. But > really, how hard can it be to recompile the entire distro for different > architectures like Gentoo does, and post the iso's with an "unsupported" > disclaimer, if need be? IMO, they will loose a lot of users if they don't. > Otherwise, Mandrake is a great distro, but the bottom line is a lot of > users won't even consider distros that only put out i586 optimized versions > (or less) anymore. After all, fewer and fewer users are even running i586 > hardware these days. Mandrake needs to get with the times. > > Robert Crawford > > On Tuesday 25 February 2003 12:15 pm, Tibbetts, Ric wrote: > > All; > > I've been watching all the threads, and excitement over the upcoming > > 9.1. As well as the critisizm over the rushed release dates. > > > > Just to add my .02 to it:
Ummm, Where are the test results showing k7 or i686 versions to be faster? I know for a fact that compiling specifically for i686 is a big mistake. In almost all cases, performance falls off. The gains possible with a k7 compile were tested, and not particularly convincing. (At least there _were_ gains unlike the "sales gimmick" extended instructions in the i686) You will note that there are compiles for the IA-64 and the Hammer/Opteron, but the i586 compiles seem not only to be broadly workable, but also pretty close to optimal, at least for the compilers available now. Maybe later compilers will be able to make better use of extended instructions. In any event, to make a distro, even without a warranty (which NONE of Mandrake's have), is a significant labor and the results from the K7 testing did NOT justify the extra effort, particularly when the wolf is at the door. But you know there are sites out there that offer i686 packages for Mandrake. I followed a thread from a list member (Jeanette Russo) from a couple of years back and actually tested their performance on a PII-333 and the i586 packages compiled in the same way were faster. The advantage the i686 packages had was looping out some diagnostics, and comparing them to a totally similar i586 preparation, the 586 had it by a good 7% in speed. Just because the CPU offers additional instructions does not mean: a. The instructions have a general utility or b. Compilers can make intelligent use of them or c. Using the instructions optimally will increase performance in every or even in most tasks. Civileme
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