printf more than 5 times faster than std::cout?

Try this:

#include <cstdlib>
#include <cstdio>
#include <ctime>
#include <iostream>

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
#if defined(NOSYNC)
    std::cout.sync_with_stdio(false);
#endif

    std::cout << "Starting std::cout test." << std::endl;

    std::clock_t start = std::clock();

    for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
    {   
        std::cout << "Hello, World! (" << i << ")" << std::endl;
    }   

    clock_t mid = std::clock();

    for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
    {   
        std::printf("Hello, World! (%i)\n", i); 
        std::fflush(stdout);
    }   

    std::clock_t end = std::clock();

    std::cout << "Time taken: P1 " << ((mid-start)*1.0/CLOCKS_PER_SEC) << std::endl;

    std::cout << "Time taken: P2 " << ((end-mid)*1.0/CLOCKS_PER_SEC) << std::endl;


    return 0;
}

Then I get:

> g++ -O3 t13.cpp
> ./a.out
# lots of lines deleted
Time taken: P1 0.002517
Time taken: P2 0.001872

> g++ -O3 t13.cpp -DNOSYNC   
> ./a.out
# lots of lines deleted
Time taken: P1 0.002398
Time taken: P2 0.001878

So the P2 times do not change.
But you get an improvement of the P1 times (ie std::cout) using std::cout.sync_with_stdio(false);. Becuase the code no longer tries to keep the two stream (std::cout stdout) synchronized. Which if you are writing pure C++ and only using std::cout not a problem.

For a true apples-to-apples comparison, re-write your test so that the only thing changing between the test cases is the print function being used:

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    const char* teststring = "Test output string\n";
    std::clock_t start;
    double duration;

    std::cout << "Starting std::cout test." << std::endl;
    start = std::clock();

    for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
        std::cout << teststring;
    /* Display timing results, code trimmed for brevity */

    for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
        std::printf(teststring);
        std::fflush(stdout);
    }
    /* Display timing results, code trimmed for brevity */
    return 0;
}

With that, you will be testing nothing but the differences between the printf and cout function calls. You won't incur any differences due to multiple << calls, etc. If you try this, I suspect that you'll get a much different result.

use

cout << "\n";

to prevent buffering. much faster