vc++: differences in runtimes of release build

Question

Hi,

when I build my project in release mode, right click the project and say debug > start new instance, this takes about 49 seconds to run(its a large task) when i go to the release folder in the project folder and click the .exe it takes 130 seconds. when I move the exe to a folder with all the dependent dll's it takes 220 seconds.

Why is this happening? Why the significant difference in execution times?

Answer 1

This is suspect to me, because when you run code in the debugger, it enables extra debugging hooks which in my experience result in SLOWER execution when run inside the IDE than outside. I never run Release Build performance tests within Visual Studio for this reason.

Are you sure that when you run outside the IDE you are not mistakenly picking up Debug versions of all or part of your dependent binaries?