Currently we're using Web Application project, so we have a gain with compilation. But as far as I know, the aspx pages a still compiled at the first page hit. So does precompilation give a perceptible performance gain ? (first hit exluded).
What type of web site (hits/sec, number of users) will benefit of it ?
Pre-compilation saves the first hit the work of doing the JIT compilation, for a site with a large number of pages who knows how long it will be before every page is visited and gets compilled.
After the first hit there's no difference between the page having compiled JIT or pre-compilled.
We use pre-compilation to ensure that the website will actually compile and don't get caught out by a missing reference or some issue with the production environment. This is also important so that no user has a different experience of our site because they have to wait for the JIT complilation.