I have following two loops in C#, and I am running these loops for a collection with 10,000 records being downloaded with paging using "yield return"

First

foreach(var k in collection) {
  repo.Save(k);
}

Second

 var collectionEnum = collection.GetEnumerator();
 while (collectionEnum.MoveNext()) {
   var k = collectionEnum.Current;
   repo.Save(k);
   k = null;
 }

Seems like that the second loop consumes less memory and it faster than the first loop. Memory I understand may be because of k being set to null(Even though I am not sure). But how come it is faster than for each.

Following is the actual code

  [Test]
    public void BechmarkForEach_Test() {
        bool isFirstTimeSync = true;
        Func<Contact, bool> afterProcessing = contactItem => {
            return true;
        };

        var contactService = CreateSerivce("/administrator/components/com_civicrm");
        var contactRepo = new ContactRepository(new Mock<ILogger>().Object);
        contactRepo.Drop();
        contactRepo = new ContactRepository(new Mock<ILogger>().Object);

        Profile("For Each Profiling",1,()=>{
            var localenumertaor=contactService.Download();
            foreach (var item in localenumertaor) {

            if (isFirstTimeSync)
                item.StateFlag = 1;

            item.ClientTimeStamp = DateTime.UtcNow;

            if (item.StateFlag == 1)
                contactRepo.Insert(item);
            else
                contactRepo.Update(item);

            afterProcessing(item);


        }
        contactRepo.DeleteAll();
        });

    }


    [Test]
    public void BechmarkWhile_Test() {
        bool isFirstTimeSync = true;
        Func<Contact, bool> afterProcessing = contactItem => {
                                                                 return true;
        };

        var contactService = CreateSerivce("/administrator/components/com_civicrm");
        var contactRepo = new ContactRepository(new Mock<ILogger>().Object);
        contactRepo.Drop();
        contactRepo = new ContactRepository(new Mock<ILogger>().Object);

        var itemsCollection = contactService.Download().GetEnumerator();

        Profile("While Profiling", 1, () =>
            {
                while (itemsCollection.MoveNext()) {

                    var item = itemsCollection.Current;
                    //if First time sync then ignore and overwrite the stateflag
                    if (isFirstTimeSync)
                        item.StateFlag = 1;

                    item.ClientTimeStamp = DateTime.UtcNow;

                    if (item.StateFlag == 1)
                        contactRepo.Insert(item);
                    else
                        contactRepo.Update(item);

                    afterProcessing(item);

                    item = null;
                }
                contactRepo.DeleteAll();

            });
    }

    static void Profile(string description, int iterations, Action func) {

        // clean up
        GC.Collect();
        GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();
        GC.Collect();

        // warm up 
        func();

        var watch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
        for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++) {
            func();
        }
        watch.Stop();
        Console.Write(description);
        Console.WriteLine(" Time Elapsed {0} ms", watch.ElapsedMilliseconds);
    }

I m using the micro bench marking, from a stackoverflow question itself benchmarking-small-code

The time taken is

• For Each Profiling Time Elapsed 5249 ms
• While Profiling Time Elapsed 116 ms