In SQL, is UPDATE always faster than DELETE+INSERT?

Question

Say I have a simple table that has the following fields:

1. ID: int, autoincremental (identity), primary key
2. Name: varchar(50), unique, has unique index<

Answer 1

A bit too late with this answer, but since I faced a similar question, I made a test with JMeter and a MySQL server on same machine, where I have used:

1. A transaction Controller (generating parent sample) that contained two JDBC Requests: a Delete and an Insert statement
2. A sepparate JDBC Request containing the Update statement.

After running the test for 500 loops, I have obtained the following results:

DEL + INSERT - Average: 62ms

Update - Average: 30ms

Results: