Originally Posted by Firefox54
thx, performance-wise, are the higher numbers better or the lower numbers better?
If you have a choice among the numbers within one distribution, higher numbers are better. But within one distribution you probably don't have that choice.
Those numbers, especially lower ones (i386 or i486) , aren't consistently used across distributions, so you can't estimate the relative performance across distributions by comparing those numbers.
Where the numbers represent a comparable difference, higher number is better as long as it is compatible with your CPU. But don't read too much meaning into comparing those numbers.