Performance (pystone) of python 2.4 lower then python 2.3 ???

[Lucas Hofman]

Hi,

Just installed Python 2.4 on a machine (RH8.0 Linux) that also has python 2.3
and python 2.2 installed. The latter came with the linux distribution, the other
are compiled from source tarballs.

Comparing them gives the following unexpected result:

[lucas at oslwb03 test]$ /usr/bin/python pystone.py
Pystone(1.1) time for 50000 passes = 1.86
This machine benchmarks at 26881.7 pystones/second
[lucas at oslwb03 test]$ /usr/local/bin/python2.3 pystone.py
Pystone(1.1) time for 50000 passes = 1.22
This machine benchmarks at 40983.6 pystones/second

This is ok, a 52% speed increase, but:

lucas at oslwb03 test]$ /usr/local/bin/python2.4 pystone.py
Pystone(1.1) time for 50000 passes = 1.31
This machine benchmarks at 38167.9 pystones/second

A 7% speed DECREASE??? According to the documentation it should be a 5% increase?

The machine is a 3.0 GHz Xeon box.

Both python 2.3 and 2.4 where configure without any options.

Anyone who understands what is going on?

Regards, Lucas