FreeBSD 5.4 on a Pentium 4

[Kris Kennaway]

On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 11:55:24AM -0500, John Nielsen wrote:
> On Thursday 08 February 2007 11:16, Philip Radford wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Just wondering if anyone could help me out with an issue on  FreeBSD which
> > has been puzzling me for a while and only now do I have the  time to go and
> > figure it out.
> >
> > We currently have version 5.4 installed  but understand that the
> > architecture it is set up for is a generic  i386.
> >
> > How do I go about optimising my base system and/or installed ports  to
> > recognise my CPU as an i686 and therefore make use of this type of  CPU.
> >
> > I have enclosed the first part of my dmesg output to identify the  CPU.
> >
> > CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz (3000.12-MHz 686-class  CPU)
> >   Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0xf41  Stepping = 1
> >   
> > Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MC
> >A,C MOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
> >    Hyperthreading: 2 logical CPUs
> 
> Add "CPUTYPE?=pentium4" to /etc/make.conf.
> 
> Remove the "cpu I486_CPU" and "cpu I586_CPU" lines from your kernel config (if 
> present), leaving only "cpu I686_CPU". Rebuild your kernel, world, and ports.

Correct as far as it goes, but the OP will see a much bigger
performance gain by updating to 6.x than the negligible gains from
recompiling with different compiler optimizations.

Kris