GCC 4.6 Compiler Performance With AVX On Sandy Bridge

While we are still battling issues with the Intel Linux graphics driver in getting that running properly with Intel's new Sandy Bridge CPUs (at least Intel's Jesse Barnes is now able to reproduce the most serious problem we've been facing, but we'll save the new graphics information for another article), the CPU performance continues to be very compelling. Two weeks ago we published the Intel Core i5 2500K Linux benchmarks that showed just how well this quad-core CPU that costs a little more than $200 USD is able to truly outperform previous generations of Intel hardware. That was just with running the standard open-source benchmarks and other Linux software, which has not been optimized for Intel's latest micro-architecture. Version 4.6 of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) though is gearing up for release and it will bring support for the AVX extensions. In this article, we are benchmarking GCC 4.6 on a Sandy Bridge system to see what benefits there are to enabling the Core i7 AVX optimizations