Ternary operator is twice as slow as an if-else block?

Question

I read everywhere that ternary operator is supposed to be faster than, or at least the same as, its equivalent if-else block.

However, I di

Answer 1

I did what Jon Skeet did and ran through 1 iteration and 1,000 iterations and got a different result from both OP and Jon. In mine, the ternary is just slightly faster. Below is the exact code:

static void runIfElse(int[] array, int iterations)
    {
        long value = 0;
        Stopwatch ifElse = new Stopwatch();
        ifElse.Start();
        for (int c = 0; c < iterations; c++)
        {
            foreach (int i in array)
            {
                if (i > 0)
                {
                    value += 2;
                }
                else
                {
                    value += 3;
                }
            }
        }
        ifElse.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Elapsed time for If-Else: {0}", ifElse.Elapsed));
    }

    static void runTernary(int[] array, int iterations)
    {
        long value = 0;
        Stopwatch ternary = new Stopwatch();
        ternary.Start();
        for (int c = 0; c < iterations; c++)
        {
            foreach (int i in array)
            {
                value += i > 0 ? 2 : 3;
            }
        }
        ternary.Stop();


        Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Elapsed time for Ternary: {0}", ternary.Elapsed));
    }

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Random r = new Random();
        int[] array = new int[20000000];
        for (int i = 0; i < array.Length; i++)
        {
            array[i] = r.Next(int.MinValue, int.MaxValue);
        }
        Array.Sort(array);

        long value = 0;

        runIfElse(array, 1);
        runTernary(array, 1);
        runIfElse(array, 1000);
        runTernary(array, 1000);
        
        Console.ReadLine();
    }

The output from my program:

Elapsed time for If-Else: 00:00:00.0140543

Elapsed time for Ternary: 00:00:00.0136723

Elapsed time for If-Else: 00:00:14.0167870

Elapsed time for Ternary: 00:00:13.9418520

Another run in milliseconds:

Elapsed time for If-Else: 20

Elapsed time for Ternary: 19

Elapsed time for If-Else: 13854

Elapsed time for Ternary: 13610

This is running in 64-bit XP, and I ran without debugging.

Edit - Running in x86:

There's a big difference using x86. This was done without debugging on and on the same xp 64-bit machine as before, but built for x86 CPUs. This looks more like OP's.

Elapsed time for If-Else: 18

Elapsed time for Ternary: 35

Elapsed time for If-Else: 20512

Elapsed time for Ternary: 32673