David Heffernan

But this topic concerns the 8 bits in a byte.

Who says that the variation isn't happening in your process?

You'll see similar results as you do presently I predict.

Ugh, a class allocated on dynamic memory just to do bit twiddling. What is so hard about the and operator?

Doesn't seem like a massive amount of variability. Probably depends on what your code does. You are measuring what is known as wall clock time. Total elapsed time. Why would you want to measure anything else? Wall clock time is the time as perceived by the users.

Define "pixel perfect" please

It hasn't been supported for years now. Use an old delphi version for legacy OS like XP.

Don't put them all over the code. Just don't!! There is always a better way.

The fundamental problem sounds like you have duplication of code. Attack that and the problem you describe simply disappears.

In other words, you added these options to your project.

Not much point creating an unmanaged wrapper when the library ships with one out of the box.

There's got to be a convention one way or another. Is it really that hard to grasp?

Generally multiple threads give performance benefits for cpu bound tasks. This one isn't cpu bound. So how do you imagine there to be any benefit?

Very hard to see anything useful coming from this. Can't imagine any way for Delphi to directly consume a managed assembly other than COM. I'd consider making your own COM wrapper of the assembly, using C#, or writing a Delphi wrapper around the C interface.

If it's a numeric column then surely it's always a number.