"William M. Quarles" <quarlewm@xxxxxxx> writes: > Hi, > > I heard this gnasty rumor attached below that says that GCC > can't optimize any differently between any of the P6 or later > processors, so that -march=pentiumpro and -march=pentium2 for -march=pentium2 allows generation of mmx instrctions, -march=pentiumpro does not. (I don't know if the optimizer makes much use of mmx however.) I believe -march=pentium2 also implies different parameters to the scheduler. See http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.3/gcc/i386-and-x86-64-Options.html#i386%20and%20x86-64%20Options for more info on these options. > example will always compile the same. I have not been able to > find anything in the GCC documentation, buglist, or > limitations list that suggests that this is the case. Is what > this developer telling me true? [snip] They will often result in the same code, but not always. They do affect use of the x86 builtins see: http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.3/gcc/X86-Built-in-Functions.html#X86%20Built-in%20Functions