Gentoo Linux vs. Linaro ARM Benchmarks
With the computational benchmarks in NAS Parallel Benchmarks, the Gentoo ARM Linux stable build tended to be slightly faster than Linaro 12.08. Both distributions were using a Linux 3.6 kernel, but Gentoo stable is using the GCC 4.7 compiler while Linaro is still with GCC 4.6. This may be the explanation of the slight performance boost. Though if it's due to the GCC upgrade from 4.6 to 4.7, it's interesting to see for the Samsung Exynos 4412 that it's only a small boost out of the compiler -- it's a much bigger improvement with the TI OMAP4460.
HMMer was also slightly faster on Gentoo.