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

Just tried updating 43 fields on a table with 44 fields, the remaining field was the primary clustered key.

The update took 8 seconds.

A Delete + Insert is faster than the minimum time interval that the "Client Statistics" reports via SQL Management Studio.

Peter

MS SQL 2008