[MPlayer-dev-eng] quick gcc version comparisons

[Diego Biurrun]

Hello!

I've rerun more or less the same benchmark on my machine (K6-III+
500MHz, 512MB SDRAM, Debian unstable updated yesterday) with gcc
2.95.3, 3.0.4, 3.1.1, 3.2.3, 3.3.2 and 3.4.0 all compiled from source.


1) Compilation speed:

2.95.3 | 10m33s
3.0.4  | 14m41s
3.1.1  | 17m12s
3.2.3  | 18m06s
3.3.2  | 18m03s
3.4.0  | 16m33s

It's going up and down, hopefully it will continue to move down..


3) Binary size

I stripped the binaries with "strip -s":

         |  2.95.4 |   3.0.4 |   3.1.1 +   3.2.3 |   3.3.3 |   3.4.0
---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------
mplayer  | 4659288 | 4324348 | 4455244 | 4642912 | 4620288 | 4316064
mencoder | 4364796 | 4016604 | 4159308 | 4342876 | 4325148 | 4026556

Seems like 3.0.4 was quite good and 3.4.0 has returned to that level.


4) Speed

I tested with four different files with the following options:

-afm ffmpeg -vfm ffmpeg -nosound -vo null -v -quiet -benchmark -frames 1000

I have cut off results for avg at 2 decimal digits and dev at 4.

blinkenlights-arcade-video-352x264.mp4 (352x264 MP4, AAC audio, MPEG4 video)

2.95.3 | avg 3.82 dev 0.0495
3.0.4  | avg 3.97 dev 0.0318
3.1.1  | avg 3.82 dev 0.0282
3.2.3  | avg 3.86 dev 0.0252
3.3.2  | avg 3.87 dev 0.0345
3.4.0  | avg 3.84 dev 0.0311

farmsluts.mov (320x172 MOV, QDM2 audio, SVQ3 video)

2.95.3 | avg 3.72 dev 0.0662
3.0.4  | avg 4.13 dev 0.0265
3.1.1  | avg 3.89 dev 0.0213
3.2.3  | avg 3.88 dev 0.0424
3.3.2  | avg 3.83 dev 0.0274
3.4.0  | avg 3.54 dev 0.0259

GoneNutty.avi (640x352 AVI, AC3 audio, MPEG4 video)

2.95.3 | avg 11.53 dev 0.024
3.0.4  | avg 11.65 dev 0.026
3.1.1  | avg 11.86 dev 0.080
3.2.3  | avg 11.69 dev 0.031
3.3.2  | avg 11.91 dev 0.012
3.4.0  | avg 11.44 dev 0.036

Mastercard.asf (320x240 ASF, WMA2 audio, WMV2 video)

2.95.3 | avg 4.82 dev 0.0450
3.0.4  | avg 4.94 dev 0.0292
3.1.1  | avg 4.98 dev 0.0421
3.2.3  | avg 4.92 dev 0.0199
3.3.2  | avg 4.89 dev 0.0273
3.4.0  | avg 4.73 dev 0.0423

3.4.0 optimizes best, except for blinkenlights and there the
difference is negligible.


5) Conclusion

Draw you own.

Mine: At least gcc starting with 3.4.0 is not both slower to compile
and worse at optimizing.  If you care about binary size 3.x is an
improvement.  Nevertheless I'm going back to 2.95.4 now.  A 60%
increase in compilation time is a lot on my humble box.

Diego