On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 10:26:51AM -0600, Joseph D. Wagner wrote: > > They're optimized for pentium4, but use the i386 instruction set. > There are instructions which have come out since the 386, like MMX, that > could improve the performance of programs. In this case, graphics programs. Many graphics programs test for features such as mmx/3dnow/sse at runtime and run alternative hand-written assembly routines when present. This way the program runs on any x86 platform regardless of featureset without needing to be compiled for a specific variant. > Why should my graphics programs suffer because some fool is running a 20 > year old computer? You forgot to attach the benchmarks showing the improvements. For a large percentage of the packages shipped in Fedora, RPMs 'optimised' for >386 just won't be noticable. Dave
