TOP versus SET ROWCOUNT

Question

Is there a difference in performance between TOP and SET ROWCOUNT or do they just get executed in the same manner?

Answer 1

One more note about performance, according to BOL:

As a part of a SELECT statement, the query optimizer can consider the value of expression in the TOP or FETCH clauses during query optimization. Because SET ROWCOUNT is used outside a statement that executes a query, its value cannot be considered in a query plan.

Article on BOL

Meaning there might be actually performance difference in these.