.NET HashTable Vs Dictionary - Can the Dictionary be as fast?

I guess it doesn't mean anything to you now. But just for reference for people stopping by

Performance Test - SortedList vs. SortedDictionary vs. Dictionary vs. Hashtable

Memory allocation:

Time used for inserting:

Time for searching an item:

System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary<TKey, TValue> and System.Collections.Hashtable classes both maintain a hash table data structure internally. None of them guarantee preserving the order of items.

Leaving boxing/unboxing issues aside, most of the time, they should have very similar performance.

The primary structural difference between them is that Dictionary relies on chaining (maintaining a list of items for each hash table bucket) to resolve collisions whereas Hashtable uses rehashing for collision resolution (when a collision occurs, tries another hash function to map the key to a bucket).

There is little benefit to use Hashtable class if you are targeting for .NET Framework 2.0+. It's effectively rendered obsolete by Dictionary<TKey, TValue>.