C# .NET versus C++ g++ fastest programs Always look at the source code. These are only the fastest programs. Do some of them use manually vectorized SIMD? Look at the other programs. They may seem more-like a fair comparison to you. spectral-norm source secs mem gz busy cpu load C# .NET 0.82 35,048 764 2.99 89% 96% 89% 89% C++ g++ 0.72 1,192 1044 2.85 99% 99% 100% 100% regex-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load C# .NET 1.42 280,892 1869 2.69 30% 39% 86% 35% C++ g++ 1.10 203,924 1315 3.43 63% 77% 71% 100% pidigits source secs mem gz busy cpu load C# .NET 0.92 35,404 977 0.96 98% 3% 2% 1% C++ g++ 0.66 5,152 986 2.63 100% 100% 100% 100% fasta source secs mem gz busy cpu load C# .NET 1.21 152,684 1691 4.58 96% 97% 92% 93% C++ g++ 0.77 2,504 2751 1.52 64% 0% 99% 37% k-nucleotide source secs mem gz busy cpu load C# .NET 3.29 182,860 2044 11.20 99% 86% 66% 90% C++ g++ 1.93 156,548 1631 5.88 69% 93% 69% 75% n-body source secs mem gz busy cpu load C# .NET 4.83 32,756 1704 4.85 0% 0% 0% 100% C++ g++ 2.12 764 1927 2.17 0% 2% 100% 0% fannkuch-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load C# .NET 8.40 30,848 1225 33.29 99% 100% 99% 99% C++ g++ 3.29 1,892 1528 13.06 100% 100% 100% 97% reverse-complement source secs mem gz busy cpu load C# .NET 1.50 950,648 1310 4.29 93% 63% 93% 38% C++ g++ 0.52 1,788 1853 0.52 0% 98% 0% 2% mandelbrot source secs mem gz busy cpu load C# .NET 3.14 64,940 1974 12.30 99% 98% 97% 97% C++ g++ 0.84 34,780 3542 3.27 99% 98% 98% 96% binary-trees source secs mem gz busy cpu load C# .NET 4.81 1,881,564 676 15.47 81% 74% 83% 83% C++ g++ 0.94 176,428 1122 3.39 86% 88% 100% 85% C# .NET .NET SDK 5.0.201 Host Version: 5.0.4; Commit: f27d337295 <ServerGarbageCollection>true</ServerGarbageCollection> C++ g++ g++ (Ubuntu 10.3.0-1ubuntu1) 10.3.0 all C# .NET programs & measurements all C++ g++ programs & measurements