DateTime.Ticks does NOT have a resolution af 100 ns? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
C# DateTime.Now precision

There are a few questions on SO regarding high-resolution timing in .NET where it is stated (as in the MSDN documentation) that the DateTime.Ticks has a resulution of 100 nano-seconds.

But this seem not to be the case at all in real-life. If I run the code below, I would expect it to generate lines, where the Tick value varies for each line, where a lot of lines are with the the same Milisecond value. But it doesn't - the ticks value stays the same until next shift in milisecond value, adding nothing to the resolution of the time-stamp.

private static List<string> GetTimeLine(long iterations)
{
    List<string> liste = new List<string>();
    for (long i = 0; i <= iterations; i++)
    {
        liste.Add(DateTime.Now.Millisecond.ToString() + " - " + DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString());
    }

    return liste;
}

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Generating timeline");
    guids = GetTimeLine(10000);
    File.WriteAllLines(@"C:\Test\GUIDS.TXT", guids);
    Console.WriteLine("File written - Press ENTER");
    Console.ReadLine();
}

Example of result output:

...
867 - 634940160118679615

867 - 634940160118679615

867 - 634940160118679615

867 - 634940160118679615

867 - 634940160118679615

868 - 634940160118689616

868 - 634940160118689616

868 - 634940160118689616

...

So what is the method for getting more than miliseconds resolution in .NET?

Answer 1

The most accurate way of measuring elapsed time in C# is to use the Stopwatch class.

This uses the microprocessor's performance counter, implemented with calls to QueryPerformanceCounter.