Maximum performance configuration for a release build VS2010

Question

I wanted to know the optimum performance configuration I can obtain for a release build. I do not need any debugging info in a release build and if omitting it helps boost performance in a release build I am more than happy to abide by those changes. Kindly let me know if these setting are acceptable or if any of these settings should be changed for better performance.This is the configuration I have

Build Type : Release

Debug Information Format : Program Database (/Zi)

Preprocesors : Following are the preprocessors

WIN32 QT_LARGEFILE_SUPPORT QT_DLL QT_NO_DEBUG NDEBUG QT_CORE_LIB QT_GUI_LIB

Generate Debug Info : Yes (/Debug)

Optimization : Maximize Speed (/O2)

Whole Program Optimization : No

Overview of entire configuration

/I".\\GeneratedFiles" /I"." /I"C:\\Qt\\4.8.4\\include" /I".\\GeneratedFiles\\Release" /I"C:\\Qt\\4.8.4\\include\\QtCore" /I"C:\\Qt\\4.8.4\\include\\QtGui" /I"....\\External\\boost-win-1.47-32bit-vs2010\\include\\boost-1_47" /I"....\\External\\ta-lib-0.4.0-msvc\\ta-lib\\c\\include\\" /I"....\\External\\Qpid-32Bit\\Debug\\include\\" /I"..\\Common\\" /I"....\\External\\log4cplus-1.1.2-rc1\\include" /Zi /nologo /W1 /WX- /O2 /Oy- /D "WIN32" /D "QT_LARGEFILE_SUPPORT" /D "QT_DLL" /D "QT_NO_DEBUG" /D "NDEBUG" /D "QT_CORE_LIB" /D "QT_GUI_LIB" /Gm- /EHsc /MD /GS /fp:precise /Zc:wchar_t- /Zc:forScope /Fp"Release\\WOPR.pch" /Fa"Release\\" /Fo"Release\\" /Fd"Release\\vc100.pdb" /Gd /analyze- /errorReport:queue

Should any of the above options be changed inorder to obtain maximum runtime performance. If I have omitted any options kindly let me know.

Answer 1

If you want to get the most optimized code from your compiler, you can try a profile guided optimization of your critical code. However, this kind of optimization is not as easy to achieve than simply tweaking to compiler options.

The achieve this, you will need to have a suite of tests that represents real-life scenarios. Instrument you code, run theses tests, and then:

• The instrumentation data will tell you where you spend most of your CPU time. Try to optimize (by hand) the parts of your code that seems to take a lot of CPU.
• Compile again your critical code with the instrumentation data as input.

I have never used this with Visual Studio (only Intel Compilers). VS2010 seems to have profile-guide optimization features .