Is that recorded somewhere? The benchmarks I've done have been pretty all over the place and seem to be around jiggling the I$ alignment. Sometimes helps, sometimes hurts.

I have a site for testing these things: https://droplet.fwsnet.net/

I wrote some tests, not sure if they are perfect:

    #include <stdexcept>
    
    volatile int i = 1;
    __attribute__((noinline)) int test() {
        return i;
    }
    
    int main()
    {
        if (test() == 0) throw std::runtime_error("");
        return 0;
    }

====> Instruction count: 612 Memory usage: 116 KB, top: 116 KB Compile time: 745326 micros Execution time: 149 micros Binary size: 98 KB

The above is with exception, below is without:

    volatile int i = 1;
    __attribute__((noinline)) int test() {
        return i;
    }
    
    int main()
    {
        if (test() == 0) return -1;
        return 0;
    }

====> Instruction count: 251 Memory usage: 16 KB, top: 16 KB Compile time: 441626 micros Execution time: 53 micros Binary size: 3 KB

Just remember to pick newlib as the target, as that is the thinnest, and the no-exceptions variant will be only 16kb.

Using full process startup/shutdown for a microbenchmark is a bit specious.

Also, what are your compile flags? godbolt shows a pretty big difference with -O2.

To monocasa, which I can't reply to:

I agree completely, it really does run everything from start to finish. Sometimes that's what you want, and sometimes you don't. I could break on main as an option, and then start the benchmarking after main. It would include teardown, unless you call _exit() at the end of main.

The compile flags are -O2, no linker GC.

I'm afraid not sorry. Though it probably wasn't a great benchmark. They were only investigating whether enabling exceptions has a cost if not thrown on MSVC. So a single example where there was a penalty was enough to cast doubt on exception usage. Enough that nobody felt like sticking their neck out to fight the cause, anyway ;)