Mex speed slower on linux than Windows

I have been trying to use mex to speed up some of my functions. I was surprised that running the same compiled mex code on windows 7 (on a inferior machine) is faster than that on a linux (Scientific Linux 6).

Windows 7

Compiler: Visual Studio C++ 2012
Processor: i5-2450M (2.5 GHz)
Elapsed time is 2.761036 seconds.

Linux

Compiler: GCC 4.4.7
Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5482  @ 3.20GHz
Elapsed time is 8.622023 seconds.

I cannot figure out why a more powerful processor will be slower in running the same mex file. Thank you for your help!

Answer 1

[Rick Rosson]

They are not the same MEX function - different compilers, different instruction set architectures, different assemblers, different linkers, different loaders, different operating systems, different memory architectures, etc.