Date:	Tue, 19 Sep 2000 16:39:33 +0100
From:	Mark Brown <broonie AT sirena DOT org DOT uk>
To:	pgcc AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: updating a distribution to pgccc ?
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On Tue, Sep 19, 2000 at 02:45:23PM +0100, Dr H. T. Leung wrote:

> In fact for a desktop home user system, if you are running Gnome/KDE, you
> probably would "percieve" a performance gain just by adding more memory

Indeed.  One of the main reasons Debian doesn't produce a Pentium
optimized version is that most of the time the gains from processor
optimization are so small that they're just not worth it.  Most programs
just aren't CPU intensive, spending far more time doing things like 
waiting for I/O of various kinds.

It tends to be that only one or two applications on a system would
benefit from this sort of thing, and even then you're probably going to
get a lot better results by tuning the program to the CPU you have
rather than just doing Pentium optimization and hoping.  Once you get
into doing things like that it works out better to ship something that's
compatible and let people decide for themselves exactly what
optimization they need in the performance critical cases.

-- 
Mark Brown  mailto:broonie AT tardis DOT ed DOT ac DOT uk   (Trying to avoid grumpiness)
            http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~broonie/
EUFS        http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/

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