Gentoo Optimizations Benchmarked (Linux Magazine)

Linux Magazine looks at benchmarks for Gentoo using different levels of GCC optimization. Testing -O2, -O3, and -Os (the latter being "optimize for size") for Gentoo, as well as adding Ubuntu 9.04 into the mix, they run the Phoronix test suite and graph the results. As one might guess, the results are mixed: "These tests show that when it comes to optimizing with GCC, there is not a huge amount of difference between them. If there had to be a winner, it would probably be -O2. It was often on par with -O3 while sometimes leading and sometimes trailing by a small margin. The fact that -O2 will also result in lower memory usage probably helps to tip the scales in its favour."

Comments (62 posted)