sorted() using generator expressions rather than lists

Question

After seeing the discussion here: Python - generate the time difference I got curious. I also initially thought that a generator is faster than a list, but when it comes to

Answer 1

I should just add to Dave Webb's timing answer [I put in what may be an anonymous edit], that when you access an optimized generator directly, it may be much faster; much of the overhead may be the code's creation of a list or generator of its own:

>>> timeit.timeit("sorted(xrange(1000, 1, -1))", number=10000)
0.34192609786987305
>>> timeit.timeit("sorted(range(1000, 1, -1))", number=10000)
0.4096639156341553
>>> timeit.timeit("sorted([el for el in xrange(1000, 1, -1)])", number=10000)
0.6886589527130127
>>> timeit.timeit("sorted(el for el in xrange(1000, 1, -1))", number=10000)
0.9492318630218506