Introduction

I recently saw a post in the public Compact Framework newsgroup that is fairly typical. The poster stated that if you want speed and performance for graphics, you should use native (meaning C or C++) code. It’s a general sentiment that I often read or hear – native code is faster than managed code for XYZ operation, so don’t use managed code. In most cases these claims are being made by developers with little experience in managed development and they rarely have any sort of empirical data to back up their statement.

I knew that I already had some code for measuring GDI performance in native code that I wrote several years ago for testing and tuning a Windows CE display driver, so I decided I’d dig it up and then create a managed application that did the same operations and then compare the results of the two with real evidence and put to rest this silly myth once again.

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