multi-media packages/gcc/latest CPU optimizations

RS ravi2boxster at gmail.com
Sat May 30 22:51:35 UTC 2009


Hi,

I'd like to understand how some of the multi-media packages are compiled
for distros to make maximum effective use of the latest CPU features
(SSE4,multi-core,large L2/L3 caches etc)

I understand pkgs are compiled assuming i386 (or i686?) to cover the
vast majority of PC's out there. For packages like
vlc,mplayer,dvd::rip,handbrake,thoggen (i.e multi-media related) are
there specific GCC/runtime optimizations that yield "real world"
performance. Let's keep gaming aside for a moment,  I have a bunch of
PC's at home (Phenom II X4, Core 2 Quad and a new Core i7 that is being
built) that are mostly used for watching high def video, ripping and
encoding etc. I buy only NVIDIA cards for my linux boxes and the latest
180.60 linux driver does a pretty decent job (still not as good as the
WinXP or Vista versions though)

I'd like to avoid Gentoo for now. Folks have asked me to try Arch and
Slackware and build from a minimal base, but I still like Fedora for the
ease with which it handles my general computing requirements (flash,
latest OO.org pkgs, programming tools, latest firefox etc)

Thoughts/Comments/Flames welcome....

Ravi





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