http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=40454
--- Comment #17 from Artem S. Tashkinov <t.artem at mailcity dot com> 2011-01-31 21:46:29 UTC --- At least on i686 platform the difference is marginal (GCC flags: -O2 -march=pentium-m -fomit-frame-pointer, Intel Core Gen 2 CPU): GCC 3.4.6 real 0m15.859s user 0m15.662s sys 0m0.177s GCC 4.5.2 real 0m16.147s user 0m15.939s sys 0m0.187s I'm compressing a 400MB TAR archive containing miscellaneous binaries and documentation. So the issue is m68060 specific.