Arch Linux

ruscook

Member

From: Sydney Australia

Registered: 2007-08-27

Posts: 105

Website

x86_64 performance/optimisation across distros? ie. Arch64 vs the rest

Hi all, I'm not that technical but just interested in the techo's opinions on the following:

Besides Arch's KISS philosophy - which is generally excellent, the i686 version is optimised for later pentiums and therefore much faster/responsive/speedier than more generic 32 bit distros like Debian/Ubuntu, Mandriva, OpenSuse etc (even when they are installed in a minimal fashion) which support much older CPU architectures.

As I understand it the 64 bit extensions to AMD and Intel CPUs are pretty much the same with regards to instruction sets, So essentially I have 2 questions.

1) is there any difference in performance out of the box of the 64 bit versions of the (generally) popular distros?

2) what optimisations is Arch applying to keep it at the forefront of generally available distros performance wise?

Russ

shining

Pacman Developer

Registered: 2006-05-10

Posts: 2,043

Re: x86_64 performance/optimisation across distros? ie. Arch64 vs the rest

the i686 version is optimised for later pentiums and therefore much faster/responsive/speedier than more generic 32 bit distros like Debian/Ubuntu, Mandriva, OpenSuse etc (even when they are installed in a minimal fashion)

Who said that ? I want names !

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pacman roulette : pacman -S $(pacman -Slq | LANG=C sort -R | head -n $((RANDOM % 10)))

doorknob60

Member

Registered: 2008-09-29

Posts: 404

Re: x86_64 performance/optimisation across distros? ie. Arch64 vs the rest

I don't think it has any extra compilation optimizations over other x86_64 distros, but with ABS and Yaourt you have the ability to easily compile packages optimized for your CPU. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Safe_Cflags

Off topic, but why does the name 'ruscook' sound familiar? *cough*RS?*cough*

ruscook

Member

From: Sydney Australia

Registered: 2007-08-27

Posts: 105

Website

Re: x86_64 performance/optimisation across distros? ie. Arch64 vs the rest

I don't think it has any extra compilation optimizations over other x86_64 distros, but with ABS and Yaourt you have the ability to easily compile packages optimized for your CPU. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Safe_Cflags

This is what I meant... do the different x86_64 use compilation options to differentiate themselves try for faster performance?

Off topic, but why does the name 'ruscook' sound familiar? *cough*RS?*cough*

err... totally lost me with that one. I use this name on a number of forums because...err... its my name .What forum do you think you know me from & who are you (TRAT?).

Russ