I take that to mean that there's not much to be gained from getting the
service pack, unless I'm experiencing problems with the program.  That's
a relief, since I really didn't feel like downloading it anyway. :)

I'm pretty happy with VC++ though, and I don't have any reason to get
another compiler.  Programming is merely a hobby for me.  I find the
code to be fast now that I turned debugging off for the final compile. I
did a quick test on a scene with some media, height fields, fog, and a
few other things.

VC++ - 2 minutes 29 seconds
Watcom - 2 minutes 30 seconds.

I'm not pretending to know enough to claim if one is better than the
other, but I do see this as an indication that the compiler does a
satisfactory job of making the executable.

-Mike

Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> 
> In article <36857A6E.8C4ED8EE@aol.com> , Mike <Ama### [at] aolcom>  wrote:
> 
> >I know that this isn't directly related to POV-Ray, but I was wondering
> >if there would be any advantage to getting service pack 3 for VC++ 5?
> >Since it is around 90 megs I'd rather not bother with it unless it would
> >provide for better executables.
> >
> >I hope to get a decent compile of the dispersion patch after the
> >holidays, so I can use all the optimizations I can get. :)
> 
> Well, in case you are up for more speed the solution is easy: Throw Visual C away!
> It is everything (e.g. buggy C++ support, slow, etc.) for big slow Windows apps, but
> (nearly) useless for fast, well working (and compiling) cross platform code or just
> learning *good* and ISO standard conform C++, hardly any example from books by
> Stroustrup will comnpile at all - or you will find one of the nice compiler errors.
> For speed try using Watcom, for (still) more speed than Visual try Borland or
> CodeWarrior...but unless you are a student, getting more than one IDE will be a bit
> expensive :-(
> 
> >I recently figured out the reason why I was getting slow code.  I was
> >compiling in debug mode.  hee hee.  So I noticed there is options for
> >pentium and pentium pro computers.  Does service pack 3 add anything for
> >Pentium II CPU's?
> 
> It fixes a lot of bugs (only?), especially in the C++ support. I don't know about
> speed improvements or P2 support - maybe this is only available in VC 6.
> 
>      Thorsten

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