Performance analysis C++ vs C#

Performance analysis C++ vs C#

Description

C++ or C#, Which is the best language?
This question have a clear answer if you are thinking in performance point of view. In the performance area C++ zigs where C# zags.

Let us take a small example,

Here I am doing some matrix operations using C++ and C#. Both are executing same algorithm.

C++ Program

int nRetCode = 0;
const int nSize = 500;
int* nMatrix1 = new int[nSize*nSize];
int* nMatrix2 = new int[nSize*nSize];
int* nMultipliedMatrix = new int[nSize*nSize];
for (int i = 0; i < nSize; i++)
{
for (int j = 0; j < nSize; j++)
{
nMatrix1[i*nSize+j] = i;
nMatrix2[i*nSize+j] = j;
}
}
int nElapsed = 0;
int nLoopCount = 5;
for( int nVal = 0; nVal < nLoopCount; nVal++ )
{
int nStart = GetTickCount();
for (int i = 0; i < nSize; i++)
{
for (int j = 0; j < nSize; j++)
{
for (int k = 0; k < nSize; k++)
{
nMultipliedMatrix[i*nSize+j] = nMatrix1[i*nSize+k] + nMatrix2[k*nSize+j];
}
}
}
nElapsed += GetTickCount()- nStart;
}
delete[] nMatrix1;
delete[] nMatrix2;
delete[] nMultipliedMatrix;
std::cout << nElapsed / nLoopCount;
return nRetCode;

C# Program
class Program
{
public const int nSize = 500;
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int[] nMatrix1 = new int[nSize * nSize];
int[] nMatrix2 = new int[nSize * nSize];
int[] nMultipliedMatrix = new int[nSize * nSize];
for (int i = 0; i < nSize; i++)
{
for (int j = 0; j < nSize; j++)
{
nMatrix1[i*nSize + j] = i;
nMatrix2[i*nSize + j] = j;
}
}
int nLoopCount = 5;
int nElapsed = 0;
for (int nVal = 0; nVal < nLoopCount; nVal++)
{
int nStart = Environment.TickCount;
for (int i = 0; i < nSize; i++)
{
for (int j = 0; j < nSize; j++)
{
for (int k = 0; k < nSize; k++)
{
nMultipliedMatrix[i * nSize + j] = nMatrix1[i * nSize + k] + nMatrix2[k * nSize + j];
}
}
}
nElapsed += Environment.TickCount - nStart;
}
Console.WriteLine(nElapsed/nLoopCount);
}
}


Above program does some basic matrix operations. While checking the performance of same algorithm implemented using C++ and C# it can be understood that the C++ is giving an excellent performance.
When this program was ran on an Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz machine with 1GB RAM the time taken was as follows.

C++ code(Average of 5 execution) = 785ms.
C# code(Average of 5 execution) = 1465ms.

So clearly we can understand that the C++ outplays C# in the case of performance. Even in executing a basic algorithm without many of the OOP like overloading, runtime polymorphism the program is taking this much of performance loss.
But c# have many other advantages like maintainability, understandability etc. But all these comes at the cost of performance.