一个很晚的答案，但我认为这对谷歌人有帮助。

They both suck when they created using linq. They both implement same code to resize buffer if necessary. ToArray internally uses a class to convert IEnumerable<> to array, by allocating an array of 4 elements. If that is not enough than it doubles the size by creating a new array double the size of current and copying current array to it. At the end it allocates a new array of count of your items. If your query returns 129 elements then ToArray will make 6 allocations and memory copy operations to create a 256 element array and than am another array of 129 to return. so much for memory efficiency.

ToList做同样的事情，但是它跳过了最后的分配，因为您可以在将来添加项。List不关心它是从linq查询创建的还是手动创建的。

List在内存上更好，但在cpu上更差，因为List是一个通用的解决方案，每个操作都需要范围检查，除了.net内部的数组范围检查之外。

因此，如果你将迭代你的结果集太多次，那么数组是很好的，因为它意味着比列表更少的范围检查，编译器通常优化数组的顺序访问。

如果在创建List时指定capacity参数，则它的初始化分配可以更好。在这种情况下，它将只分配数组一次，假设您知道结果大小。linq的ToList没有指定重载来提供它，因此我们必须创建扩展方法，该方法创建一个具有给定容量的列表，然后使用list <>. addrange。

为了完成这个问题，我必须写出下面的句子

At the end, you can use either an ToArray, or ToList, performance will not be so different ( see answer of @EMP ). You are using C#. If you need performance then do not worry about writing about high performance code, but worry about not writing bad performance code. Always target x64 for high performance code. AFAIK, x64 JIT is based on C++ compiler, and does some funny things like tail recursion optimizations. With 4.5 you can also enjoy the profile guided optimization and multi core JIT. At last, you can use async/await pattern to process it quicker.

性能差异并不显著，因为List<T>是作为动态大小的数组实现的。调用ToArray()(它使用内部Buffer<T>类来增长数组)或ToList()(它调用List<T>(IEnumerable<T>)构造函数)将最终成为将它们放入数组并增长数组直到适合它们为止的问题。

如果您希望具体确认这一事实，请查看Reflector中所讨论的方法的实现——您将看到它们的代码几乎完全相同。

我发现人们在这里做的其他基准测试都有不足，所以这里是我的尝试。如果你发现我的方法有问题，请告诉我。

/* This is a benchmarking template I use in LINQPad when I want to do a
 * quick performance test. Just give it a couple of actions to test and
 * it will give you a pretty good idea of how long they take compared
 * to one another. It's not perfect: You can expect a 3% error margin
 * under ideal circumstances. But if you're not going to improve
 * performance by more than 3%, you probably don't care anyway.*/
void Main()
{
    // Enter setup code here
    var values = Enumerable.Range(1, 100000)
        .Select(i => i.ToString())
        .ToArray()
        .Select(i => i);
    values.GetType().Dump();
    var actions = new[]
    {
        new TimedAction("ToList", () =>
        {
            values.ToList();
        }),
        new TimedAction("ToArray", () =>
        {
            values.ToArray();
        }),
        new TimedAction("Control", () =>
        {
            foreach (var element in values)
            {
                // do nothing
            }
        }),
        // Add tests as desired
    };
    const int TimesToRun = 1000; // Tweak this as necessary
    TimeActions(TimesToRun, actions);
}


#region timer helper methods
// Define other methods and classes here
public void TimeActions(int iterations, params TimedAction[] actions)
{
    Stopwatch s = new Stopwatch();
    int length = actions.Length;
    var results = new ActionResult[actions.Length];
    // Perform the actions in their initial order.
    for (int i = 0; i < length; i++)
    {
        var action = actions[i];
        var result = results[i] = new ActionResult { Message = action.Message };
        // Do a dry run to get things ramped up/cached
        result.DryRun1 = s.Time(action.Action, 10);
        result.FullRun1 = s.Time(action.Action, iterations);
    }
    // Perform the actions in reverse order.
    for (int i = length - 1; i >= 0; i--)
    {
        var action = actions[i];
        var result = results[i];
        // Do a dry run to get things ramped up/cached
        result.DryRun2 = s.Time(action.Action, 10);
        result.FullRun2 = s.Time(action.Action, iterations);
    }
    results.Dump();
}

public class ActionResult
{
    public string Message { get; set; }
    public double DryRun1 { get; set; }
    public double DryRun2 { get; set; }
    public double FullRun1 { get; set; }
    public double FullRun2 { get; set; }
}

public class TimedAction
{
    public TimedAction(string message, Action action)
    {
        Message = message;
        Action = action;
    }
    public string Message { get; private set; }
    public Action Action { get; private set; }
}

public static class StopwatchExtensions
{
    public static double Time(this Stopwatch sw, Action action, int iterations)
    {
        sw.Restart();
        for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
        {
            action();
        }
        sw.Stop();

        return sw.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds;
    }
}
#endregion

你可以在这里下载LINQPad脚本。

结果:

调整上面的代码，你会发现:

当处理较小的数组时，差异就不那么显著了。 在处理整型而不是字符串时，这种差异不太显著。 使用大型结构体而不是字符串通常会花费更多的时间，但并不会真正改变比例。

这与投票最多的答案的结论一致:

除非您的代码经常生成许多大型数据列表，否则不太可能注意到性能上的差异。(当创建1000个包含100K字符串的列表时，只有200ms的差异。) ToList()始终运行得更快，如果不打算长时间保留结果，那么它是一个更好的选择。

更新

@JonHanna指出，根据Select的实现，ToList()或ToArray()实现可以提前预测结果集合的大小。将上面代码中的. select (i => i)替换为Where(i => true)会产生非常相似的结果，并且更有可能这样做，而不管. net实现如何。

首选ToListAsync<T>()。

在实体框架6中，这两个方法最终都调用相同的内部方法，但ToArrayAsync<T>()在最后调用list.ToArray()，实现为

T[] array = new T[_size];
Array.Copy(_items, 0, array, 0, _size);
return array;

所以ToArrayAsync<T>()有一些开销，因此ToListAsync<T>()是首选。

内存总是会被分配两次——或者类似的情况。由于不能调整数组的大小，这两种方法都将使用某种机制在不断增长的集合中收集数据。(好吧，这个名单本身就是一个不断增长的集合。)

List使用数组作为内部存储，并在需要时将容量增加一倍。这意味着平均2/3的项目至少被重新分配过一次，其中一半至少被重新分配过两次，一半至少被重新分配过三次，以此类推。这意味着每个项目平均被重新分配了1.3次，这并不是很大的开销。

还要记住，如果你在收集字符串，集合本身只包含对字符串的引用，字符串本身不会被重新分配。

一种选择是添加自己的扩展方法，该方法返回一个只读的ICollection<T>。当您既不想使用数组/列表的索引属性，也不想从列表中添加/删除时，这可能比使用ToList或ToArray更好。

public static class EnumerableExtension
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Causes immediate evaluation of the linq but only if required.
    /// As it returns a readonly ICollection, is better than using ToList or ToArray
    /// when you do not want to use the indexing properties of an IList, or add to the collection.
    /// </summary>
    /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
    /// <param name="enumerable"></param>
    /// <returns>Readonly collection</returns>
    public static ICollection<T> Evaluate<T>(this IEnumerable<T> enumerable)
    {
        //if it's already a readonly collection, use it
        var collection = enumerable as ICollection<T>;
        if ((collection != null) && collection.IsReadOnly)
        {
            return collection;
        }
        //or make a new collection
        return enumerable.ToList().AsReadOnly();
    }
}

单元测试:

[TestClass]
public sealed class EvaluateLinqTests
{
    [TestMethod]
    public void EvalTest()
    {
        var list = new List<int> {1, 2, 3};
        var linqResult = list.Select(i => i);
        var linqResultEvaluated = list.Select(i => i).Evaluate();
        list.Clear();
        Assert.AreEqual(0, linqResult.Count());
        //even though we have cleared the underlying list, the evaluated list does not change
        Assert.AreEqual(3, linqResultEvaluated.Count());
    }

    [TestMethod]
    public void DoesNotSaveCreatingListWhenHasListTest()
    {
        var list = new List<int> {1, 2, 3};
        var linqResultEvaluated = list.Evaluate();
        //list is not readonly, so we expect a new list
        Assert.AreNotSame(list, linqResultEvaluated);
    }

    [TestMethod]
    public void SavesCreatingListWhenHasReadonlyListTest()
    {
        var list = new List<int> {1, 2, 3}.AsReadOnly();
        var linqResultEvaluated = list.Evaluate();
        //list is readonly, so we don't expect a new list
        Assert.AreSame(list, linqResultEvaluated);
    }

    [TestMethod]
    public void SavesCreatingListWhenHasArrayTest()
    {
        var list = new[] {1, 2, 3};
        var linqResultEvaluated = list.Evaluate();
        //arrays are readonly (wrt ICollection<T> interface), so we don't expect a new object
        Assert.AreSame(list, linqResultEvaluated);
    }

    [TestMethod]
    [ExpectedException(typeof (NotSupportedException))]
    public void CantAddToResultTest()
    {
        var list = new List<int> {1, 2, 3};
        var linqResultEvaluated = list.Evaluate();
        Assert.AreNotSame(list, linqResultEvaluated);
        linqResultEvaluated.Add(4);
    }

    [TestMethod]
    [ExpectedException(typeof (NotSupportedException))]
    public void CantRemoveFromResultTest()
    {
        var list = new List<int> {1, 2, 3};
        var linqResultEvaluated = list.Evaluate();
        Assert.AreNotSame(list, linqResultEvaluated);
        linqResultEvaluated.Remove(1);
    }
}