Summary: Hashtables are tuned for a medium to large number of entries of medium to large sized objects

Hashtable

As with the ""ArrayList"" class (PerfSystemCollectionsArrayList) you will generally find that Dictionary<K,V> (PerfSystemCollectionsGenericDictionary) offers better overall performance than Hashtable. However, neither is tuned for cases where there are many Hashtables/Dictionaries with very few items in them. Consider ""System.Collections.Specialized.HybridDictionary"" or even ""System.Collections.Specialized.ListDictionary"" for those cases.

Note: We may yet find time to improve Dictionary<K,V> for the small number of entries case, we would want to clarify this topic if we do so.