[xjay]

Sidenote: MSVC had an optimization option for Windows 98, I think it was /OPT:98 (/FILEALIGN:4096). It sets the "file alignment" of sections in the portable executable (PE) file to 4096 bytes (0x1000) = 1 memory page -> noticeably more efficient because it's a direct copy operation. It's sacrificing space (padding empty space with thousands of zeros) for time (one copy operation instead of many to shuffle data into memory pages).

(The file alignment still defaults to a 512-byte (0x200) sector size which means the inefficiency is there today even though you may not notice it in isolation, but the "sector"/buffer size has been at least 4096 bytes since 2011. [2])

> The /FILEALIGN option can be used to make disk utilization more efficient, or to make page loads from disk faster. [Assuming it matches the page size = 4096 bytes.] [1]

> All hard drive manufacturers committed to shipping new hard drive platforms for desktop and notebook products with the Advanced Format sector formatting [4096-byte or greater] by January 2011. [2]

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/fileal...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format

[moshegramovsky]

People like you remind me that I'm still an amateur at all this :)