For anyone interested in optimized builds,
this page has some optimized binaries for windows users, you need to select the one that is right for your cpu. I've had good success building my own optimized version and do think it runs faster than a non-opt build. The only thing I'll say is that the ones with the -O3 flag (highest compiler [gcc] optimisation) might be unstable, mine is with O2, O3 kept segfaulting on me and I've seen reports from other people with similar results.