has the linker an impact on performance of generated code?

[Paolo Losi <losi at altrimedia dot it>]

Hello,
	the question is simple: is that possible that in between all the
possible combinations of compilers (egcs 1.1b gcc 2.7.2.3) switches (-O1
-O2 -O3) and linkers the best solution as far as performance of
generated code is concerned is the following:

egcs -c -O1 -fomit-frame-pointer prime.c
gcc-2.7 -s -lm prime.o

In particular the performance is 10% better that that obtained using
egcs's linker:

egcs -c -O1 -fomit-frame-pointer prime.c
egcs -s -lm prime.o


How could you explain that?
		Thanks
			Paolo Losi

P.S. please CC: the answer to me directly



the system is:
P166MMX linux 2.0.35
ld.so 1.9.9
libc 5.4.46


prime.c:

#include "math.h"
#include "stdio.h"

int main(int argc,char **argv) {
        long long  num;
        long long  i,max;
        int prime;
        sscanf(argv[1],"%lld",&num); 
        printf("%lld\n",num);

        while (num % 2 == 0) {
                printf("2 ");
                num >>= 1;
        }

        while(num != 1) {
                prime=1;
                max=(long long) sqrt((double) num);
                if(3>max) max=3;
                for(i=3;i<=max;i+=2)
                        if(num%i==0) {
                                num /= i;
                                prime=0;
                                printf("%lld ",i);
                                break;
                        } 
                if(prime==1) {
                        printf("%lld \n",num);
                        num=1;
                }
        }


        return 0;
}