Is it worthwhile to use particle pools in managed languages?

Question

I was going to implement an object pool for my particle system in Java, then I found this on Wikipedia. To rephrase, it says that object pools aren't worth using in managed languages like Java and C#, because allocations take just tens of operations as compared to hundreds in unmanaged languages like C++.

But as we all know, every instruction may hurt game performance. For example, a pool of clients in an MMO: the clients won't enter and exit the pool too fast. But particles may get renewed tens of times in a second.

The question is: is it worth it to use an object pool for particles (specifically, those that die and get recreated fast) in a managed language?

Answer 1

Yes, it is.

Allocation time isn't the only factor. Allocation can have side-effects, such as inducing a garbage collection pass, which can not only impact performance negatively it can also impact performance unpredictably. The specifics of this will depend on your language and platform choices.

Pooling also generally improves locality of reference for the objects in the pool, for example by keeping them all in contiguous arrays. This can improve performance while iterating the contents of the pool (or at least the live portion thereof) because the next object in the iteration will tend to already be in the data cache.

The conventional wisdom of trying to avoid any allocations whatsoever in your innermost game loops still applies even in managed languages (especially on, for example, the 360 when using XNA). The reasons for it just differ slightly.