See DarkShikari's comment for details on what goes wrong when a compiler tries to be all things to all architectures. -------- I should clarify. I agree with

See DarkShikari's comment for details on what goes wrong when a compiler tries to be all things to all architectures. -------- I should clarify. I agree with what you said below, these days GCC is an excellent compiler for x86. It's just that it's near to impossible to be so excellent for all archs.