The Dual Core and Quad Core options specify the number of processes spawned during compilation, so they can really speed up the compiling process.
Question: Does using different compile options result in the exact same mame.exe? In other words they only affect how efficiently the same mame.exe is compiled?
Or, do the different options produce different mame.exe's optimized somehow for different processors and instruction sets?
Also, is there ever a reason NOT to use the Disable Warnings as Error option?
<edit> Well, after lots of compiling, it appears that the different compile options affect not only the compiling process, but also the end result. So if I compile a quad core version, the compiler makes a quad core mame, and uses four cores to do it. That's pretty clever but I wonder if they could be separated, because if I compile a single core version on my quad core machine, my four cores are not fully utilized.
Compiling Mame UI 134u3 on an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz
Settings, Time, File Size, crc32
None = 13:01 35,594,752 ccedfe67
None plus Dual Core = 4:31 35,594,752 115225d3
None plus Quad Core = 3:44 35,594,752 2e1b6b89
None plus Dual Core AND Quad Core = 4:38 35,594,752 f609c7b0
Intel Core 2 = 13:44 35,793,408 730d53f2
Intel Core 2 plus Dual Core = 4:49 35,793,408 e9e74139
Intel Core 2 plus Quad Core = 3:56 35,793,408 da1be89b
Intel Core 2 plus Dual Core AND Quad Core = 4:49 35,793,408 c2c43672