For graphics drawing on WinCE platform, which language is faster: MFC VC++ or C#

Question

Hi, I need to draw extensive realtime graphics on WinCE platform. For that purpose, which language is better between VC++ and C# to get high performance? Moreover, the graphics application that we would be developing should be linked to currently existing c++ modules. If writing intermediate layer involves lot of effort if we choose c#, then we would not choose it. Pls consider this also.

Answer 1

Under no conditions C# is faster than C++. They might be eaqual at the best. And as you have to use C++ libs, there is doubt winner, C++ :-)

Answer 2

You might want to make direct calls to GDI, so it doesn't matter which language you use, since actual action happens in GDI dll.

However, if you also want to interact with C++ libs, you better go with VC++, closely related. Otherwise, you need to have wrappers to converse between C# and C++, which is overhead for tasks like graphics drawing.

Please note that, I'm talking about C#, not C# on .Net Framework.

Answer 3

You seem to be answering your own question. It is heavily loaded towards saying c++ is the preferred choice.

If you chose c# then yes you would have to write wrappers and look after allt he type conversions (along with all testing) prior to starting to extend your functionality.

why do you need such high graphics performance that the c++ vs c# question arises?

You are basically looking at getting into directx or opengl if you are using c++ vs xna on c#.

Because your codebase is already c++ it seems that your experience would be there also and so changing to c# is unlikley to yeild any performance increase in either fps or development time.

c++ will always have the potential to perform faster ... to downside is that the development costs are higher as it does less for you automatically. the tradeoff for c# is that if you want this performance back you have to really plan ahead in situations where you have large numbers of objects being created and disposed.