是的，性能差异是显著的。请参阅KB文章“如何在Visual c#中提高字符串连接性能”。

我总是试着先编写清晰的代码，然后再优化性能。这比反过来做要容易得多!但是，看到了两者在我的应用程序中的巨大性能差异后，我现在更仔细地考虑了一下。

幸运的是，在代码上运行性能分析相对简单，可以看到您在哪些地方花费了时间，然后在需要的地方修改它以使用StringBuilder。

我相信StringBuilder更快，如果你有超过4个字符串，你需要附加在一起。此外，它可以做一些很酷的事情，如AppendLine。

作为一般的经验法则，如果我必须设置字符串的值不止一次，或者如果字符串有任何追加，那么它需要是一个字符串构建器。在了解字符串构建器之前，我曾经看到我过去编写的应用程序具有巨大的内存足迹，而且似乎一直在不断增长。将这些程序更改为使用字符串构建器可以显著减少内存使用。现在我对琴弦制造者发誓。

The performance of a concatenation operation for a String or StringBuilder object depends on how often a memory allocation occurs. A String concatenation operation always allocates memory, whereas a StringBuilder concatenation operation only allocates memory if the StringBuilder object buffer is too small to accommodate the new data. Consequently, the String class is preferable for a concatenation operation if a fixed number of String objects are concatenated. In that case, the individual concatenation operations might even be combined into a single operation by the compiler. A StringBuilder object is preferable for a concatenation operation if an arbitrary number of strings are concatenated; for example, if a loop concatenates a random number of strings of user input.

来源:MSDN

这个基准测试表明，当组合3个或更少字符串时，常规连接更快。

http://www.chinhdo.com/20070224/stringbuilder-is-not-always-faster/

StringBuilder可以在内存使用方面做出非常显著的改进，特别是在将500个字符串加在一起的情况下。

考虑下面的例子:

string buffer = "The numbers are: ";
for( int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
{
    buffer += i.ToString();
}
return buffer;

内存中发生了什么?创建以下字符串:

1 - "The numbers are: "
2 - "0"
3 - "The numbers are: 0"
4 - "1"
5 - "The numbers are: 01"
6 - "2"
7 - "The numbers are: 012"
8 - "3"
9 - "The numbers are: 0123"
10 - "4"
11 - "The numbers are: 01234"
12 - "5"
13 - "The numbers are: 012345"

通过将这5个数字加到字符串的末尾，我们创建了13个字符串对象!其中12个是无用的!哇!

StringBuilder fixes this problem. It is not a "mutable string" as we often hear (all strings in .NET are immutable). It works by keeping an internal buffer, an array of char. Calling Append() or AppendLine() adds the string to the empty space at the end of the char array; if the array is too small, it creates a new, larger array, and copies the buffer there. So in the example above, StringBuilder might only need a single array to contain all 5 additions to the string-- depending on the size of its buffer. You can tell StringBuilder how big its buffer should be in the constructor.

从内存的角度来看，StringBuilder的性能会更好。至于处理，执行时间的差异可以忽略不计。