I currently use the following preprocessor defines, and various optimization settings: WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN VC_EXTRALEAN NOMINMAX _CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS _SCL_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS _SECURE_SCL=0 _HAS_ITERATOR_DEBUGGING=0 My question is what other things do fellow SOers use, add, define, in order to get a Release Mode build from VS C++ (2008,2010) to be as performant as possible? btw, I've tried PGO etc, it does help a bit but nothing that comes to parity, also I'm not using streams, the C++ i'm talking about its more like C but making use of templates and STL algorithms. As it stands now very simple code segments flop when compared to what GCC produces on say an equivalent x86 machine running linux (2.6+ kernel) using 02. Side-Note: I believe a lot of the issues relate directly to the STL version (Dinkum) provided by MS. Could people please elaborate on experiences using STLPort etc with VS C++.