[JohnTHaller]

People always seem to forget this in terms of CPU optimizations. It's both good and bad, though. If you're pegged to a given version of a compiler, the point releases likely won't see any optimization while the major releases will likely include additional optimizations for newer chipsets. And I'd wager AMD will be working to get optimizations into both open source compilers as well as things like Visual Studio. One thing to note is that switching to a newer compilker will likely be easier for most of Linux-land as opposed to Windows land. Upping the compiler version with your code compiled in GCC is often much easier than switching to a newer version of Visual Studio due to both cost and dropping older operating systems (the latest won't support Windows XP and Vista for instance, which may matter to some specific business lines and consumer areas).