GCC 4.9 Compiler Optimization Benchmarks For Faster Binaries

FLAC benefits a lot from the basic optimize level and there were minor benefits in pushing further, including -march=native targeting for the Haswell CPU.

The LAME MP3 encoding performance also benefits a great deal from the increased compiler optimizations.

These findings aren't really different from previous releases of the GNU Compiler Collection, but if you are new to the compiler world or have just been curious what performance advantages can be had by recompiling your performance sensitive workloads with greater optimization flags, here's a lot of fresh real-world data.

When running your own compiler tests you can also use the Phoronix Test Suite and OpenBenchmarking.org to reproduce our findings and/or carry out other open-source compiler performance benchmarks. Have questions? Let us know!