A Review of GCC 4.0

ChaoticCoyote writes " I've just posted a short review of GCC 4.0, which compares it against GCC 3.4.3 on Opteron and Pentium 4 systems, using LAME, POV-Ray, the Linux kernel, and SciMark2 as benchmarks. My conclusion: Is GCC 4.0 better than its predecessors? In terms of raw numbers, the answer is a definite "no". I've tried GCC 4.0 on other programs, with similar results to the tests above, and I won't be recompiling my Gentoo systems with GCC 4.0 in the near future. The GCC 3.4 series still has life in it, and the GCC folk have committed to maintaining it. A 3.4.4 update is pending as I write this. That said, no one should expect a "point-oh-point-oh" release to deliver the full potential of a product, particularly when it comes to a software system with the complexity of GCC. Version 4.0.0 is laying a foundation for the future, and should be seen as a technological step forward with new internal architectures and the addition of Fortran 95. If you compile a great deal of C++, you'll want to investigate GCC 4.0. Keep an eye on 4.0. Like a baby, we won't really appreciate its value until it's matured a bit. "