i386 RPM's in an i686 machine?
 

I'm running RH9 in the RHN update it auto subscribed me to the i386 channel and from what i've been seeing most RPM's for RH are i386 but with an i686 machine am I not getting everything I could? If I read another thread correctly would compiling from source and changing things fix this issue? or is there in an issue at all.. keep in mind I've compiled like twice, still want to learn but very inexperienced. But I want to get the most out of my distro and my machine..

yes, technically you aren't getting full performance, but I believe Redhat compiles their binaries like:

-mcpu=i386 -march=i686

so the binaries run on i386 (though technically, this hasnt been possible since GCC 3.2 came out), but are optimized for i686.

And even at that, the performace gain is marginal.

But as long as your GCC settings are right, compiling yourself will give you full performace.