Since I do not care to much about precision I ended up comparing them. I am capturing lots of packets on the network and I want to place the time when I receive each packet. Here is the code that tests 5 million iterations
int iterations = 5000000;
// Test using datetime.now
{
var date = DateTime.UtcNow.AddHours(DateTime.UtcNow.Second);
var now = DateTime.UtcNow;
for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
{
if (date == DateTime.Now)
Console.WriteLine("it is!");
}
Console.WriteLine($"Done executing {iterations} iterations using datetime.now. It took {(DateTime.UtcNow - now).TotalSeconds} seconds");
}
// Test using datetime.utcnow
{
var date = DateTime.UtcNow.AddHours(DateTime.UtcNow.Second);
var now = DateTime.UtcNow;
for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
{
if (date == DateTime.UtcNow)
Console.WriteLine("it is!");
}
Console.WriteLine($"Done executing {iterations} iterations using datetime.utcnow. It took {(DateTime.UtcNow - now).TotalSeconds} seconds");
}
// Test using stopwatch
{
Stopwatch sw = new Stopwatch();
sw.Start();
var now = DateTime.UtcNow;
for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
{
if (sw.ElapsedTicks == DateTime.Now.Ticks)
Console.WriteLine("it is!");
}
Console.WriteLine($"Done executing {iterations} iterations using stopwatch. It took {(DateTime.UtcNow - now).TotalSeconds} seconds");
}
The output is:
Done executing 5000000 iterations using datetime.now. It took 0.8685502 seconds
Done executing 5000000 iterations using datetime.utcnow. It took 0.1074324 seconds
Done executing 5000000 iterations using stopwatch. It took 0.9625021 seconds
So in conclusion DateTime.UtcNow is the fastest if you do not care to much about precision. This also supports the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/6986472/637142 from this question.
