Way back in the aughties I saw an interesting analysis (on a now defunct blog) indicating that under typical usage C# implementations tend to outperform C++ implementations in long-running business applications. The supposed reason was that C#’s compacting GC keeps the cost of new allocations fairly constant. By contrast, in C++ under typical use every new allocation requires probing for a sufficiently large block of free memory in an increasingly fragmented heap.

I haven’t tried to replicate this for myself. And, even assuming for the sake of argument that it was definitely true back then, a lot can happen in 20 years. But still, it does speak to wanting options when performance really is critical.