About gcc

[Tim Prince]

On Monday 10 June 2002 19:38, mike stump wrote:
> > Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 10:25:37 +0800
> > From: =?GB2312?Q?=B6=AD=BA=C6(Houston)?= <dh@yamido.com>
> > To: "gcc@gnu.org" <gcc@gnu.org>
> >
> > Our project would be platform independent, but the most user's
> > platform is win32.  We don't like ms$'s vc7, so we want to use gcc
> > to compile it under win32.  We would use only ANSI C.
>
> Ok.
>
> > Then my questions are:
> >
> > 1.  Our project is commercial.  Must we open the source?
>
> No.  For example, you can use mingw32.
>
> > 2.  Which is more efficient, the binary compilered by vc7 or by
> > win32 gcc?
>
> You'd have to benchmark your own application under both to determine
> that.  I suspect quite a few programs are within 5% either way.  5% is
> like asking, what is faster, a 1.8GHz machine or 1.89GHz machine.  The
> answer is, a 2.0 GHz machine is faster, no matter.

When using floating point, it's not unusual to see a current gcc 25% faster 
running than the much older msvc, provided that attention is paid to issues 
such as data alignment.  Since those qualifications rule out the majority of 
applications, Mike is no doubt correct.  gcc also has the 
advantage, should you choose to work within standards, of accepting more 
portable code, as well as running on a much wider variety of targets.  A 
further performance boost might be seen with other commercial compilers, such 
as Intel's.  

-- 
Tim Prince