gas vs. nasm: which assembler produces the best code?

Question

Both tools translate assembly instructions directly into machine code, but is it possible to determine which one produces the fastest and cleanest code?

Answer 1

@Brian: that was not the question ...

@cyber98834: Well, an assembler does what every assembler must do : translate every instruction to its opcode .

There's no optimization .

Oh and also, there's not such a thing as a "fastest code" ... Can I ask you a question ? The CPU's speed is static, isn't it ?

So, you can't make a code run faster because you can't change the CPU's speed .

But, you can shrink the code so that the CPU handles less amount of instructions, and so takes less time to run .

I hope you understand what I'm trying to say .

I suggest you to buy ( or to look for some pdf's, but I don't know if that's legal ) Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book which covers many optimization lessons .