Performance overhead for properties in .NET

Question

I read somewhere that having public properties is preferable to having public members in a class.

1. Is this only because of abstaraction and modularity? Are

Answer 1

I've asked the same question before.

I'm guessing you're using VS2008, are using a 64-bit OS and have compilation set to "Any CPU"? If so, properties don't get inlined by the x64 JIT compiler. They do on 32-bit, making them identical in performance to public fields.