  In this communication we have studied the electronic structure, magnetic and
optical properties of bcc \fecr alloys in the ferromagnetic phase. We have used
the augmented space recursion technique coupled with tight-binding linearized
muffin-tin orbital technique (TB-LMTO-ASR) as well as the coherent-potential
approximation based on the Korringa-Kohn-Rostocker method (KKR-CPA). Also the
plane wave projector augmented wave (PAW) method has been used with the
disorder simulated by the special quasi-random structure method f or
configuration averaging (SQS). This was to provide a comparison between the
different methods in common use for random alloys. Moreover, using the
self-consistent potential parameters from TB-LMTO-ASR ca lculations we obtained
the spin resolved optical conductivity using the generalized recursion
technique proposed by M\"uller and Vishwanathan.
