ASP.NET Site Performance Secrets

UtcNow

If you compare dates in your site without showing those dates to the visitor, DateTime.UtcNow is a lot faster than DateTime.Now.

Take this code, which compares against DateTime.Now 1000 times:

DateTime dt = DateTime.Now;
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
{
DateTime dt2 = DateTime.Now;
bool b = (dt2 > dt);
}

The equivalent using UtcNow is as follows:

DateTime dtu = DateTime.UtcNow;
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
{
DateTime dtu2 = DateTime.UtcNow;
bool b = (dtu2 > dtu);
}

Here is how they compare on my machine:

Test	Time taken (ticks)
1000 * Now	3964
1000 * UtcNow	136