I ran the same test from http://tinyurl.com/n59qb8 multiple times, for different data-structure sizes: MSVC /O2 size mono std mono/std -------------------------------------------------- 100 0.103 0.355 0.290141% 1100 1.439 4.402 0.326897% 2100 3.01 8.669 0.347214% 3100 4.841 13.186 0.367132% 4100 6.598 17.344 0.38042% 5100 8.584 21.848 0.392896% 6100 10.629 26.113 0.407039% 7100 12.595 30.762 0.409434% 8100 14.512 35.135 0.413035% 9100 16.996 39.713 0.427971% GCC 4.3.3 -O4 size mono std mono/std -------------------------------------------------- 100 0.08 0.12 0.666667% 1100 1.18 1.71 0.690058% 2100 2.4 3.48 0.689655% 3100 3.7 5.42 0.682657% 4100 5.11 8.06 0.633995% 5100 7 9.62 0.727651% 6100 8.27 11.78 0.702037% 7100 9.69 14.02 0.691155% 8100 11.72 16.29 0.71946% 9100 12.99 18.64 0.696888% Cheers, Christian.