Does creating a thread with a while(true) loop better than using a timer in C#?

Question

I know that c# allows to use a timer using:

System.Windows.Forms.Timer timer = new System.Windows.Forms.Timer();
timer.Interval = 1000/60;
timer.Tick += new EventHandler(TimerEventProcessor);
timer.Start();


private static void TimerEventProcessor(Object myObject, EventArgs myEventArgs)
{
    //Do something
}

But, I have seen in this YouTube tutorial that instead of using Timer they created a thread that implements a timer of its own:

var task = new Task(Run());
task.start();

protected void run ()
{
    while (true)
    {
        Thread.sleep(1000/60);
        //Do something
    }
}

Are there any benefits to using the second way over the simpler Timer?

Answer 1

There are timing methods that are better than System.Windows.Forms.Timer for various reasons, but none include your own thread management (that is a waste of resources since each thread has substantial memory overhead).

Comparing the Timer Classes in the .NET Framework Class Library

Here is the table from the bottom of the article:

+---------------------------------------+----------------------+---------------------+------------------+
|                                       | System.Windows.Forms |    System.Timers    | System.Threading |
+---------------------------------------+----------------------+---------------------+------------------+
| Timer event runs on what thread?      | UI thread            | UI or worker thread | Worker thread    |
| Instances are thread safe?            | No                   | Yes                 | No               |
| Familiar/intuitive object model?      | Yes                  | Yes                 | No               |
| Requires Windows Forms?               | Yes                  | No                  | No               |
| Metronome-quality beat?               | No                   | Yes*                | Yes*             |
| Timer event supports state object?    | No                   | No                  | Yes              |
| Initial timer event can be scheduled? | No                   | No                  | Yes              |
| Class supports inheritance?           | Yes                  | Yes                 | No               |
+---------------------------------------+----------------------+---------------------+------------------+

* Depending on the availability of system resources (for example, worker threads)

Answer 2

Although neither way of timing events is exact, the first method is somewhat more precise: consider a situation where the code that you marked with //Do something takes 100 ms. Then the interval between the invocations of //Do something would be 1000/60+100, not 1000/60 as you expected.