Performance of reading a registry key?

Question

I'm wondering how long it takes (in milliseconds) to read a registry value from the Windows registry through standard C# libraries. In this case, I'm reading in some proxy settings.

What order of magnitude value should I expect? Are there any good benchmark data available?

I'm running WS2k8 R2 amd64. Bonus points: How impactful is the OS sku/version on this measure?

 using (RegistryKey registryKey = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(@"Software/Copium")) 
 { 
      return (string)registryKey.GetValue("BinDir"); 
 } 

Answer 1

This blog post from Raymond Chen should prove helpful: The performance cost of reading a registry key

I would add that in general, it is not recommended to store settings in the registry for C# apps, use persisted storage, or a config file or something of that nature. There are problems related to permissions when you deal with the registry. Reading is often not an issue, but if you are going to persist things then it gets hairy, especially with UAC and newer OSs that shadow copy things.