Async vs Sync Benchmarks on MVC Controller with Questions

Question

I have set-up the examples from this MSDN article Using Asynchronous Methods in ASP.NET MVC 4 and have done some benchmarking to see what I come up with.

Server Configur

Answer 1

I think the clue is in your comparison

webClient.DownloadString(uri)

to

var response = await httpClient.GetAsync(uri);
return (await response.Content.ReadAsAsync<object>());

maybe you can try

webclient.DownloadStringAsync(uri)

and you could optimize your async code to

await Task.Run(() => {
    // just run your sync code here
    var g1 = GetGizmos("url1");
    var g2 = GetGizmos("url2");
    var g3 = GetGizmos("url3");
    return Content("");
});

It is enough to have one async yielding point here.

Refer to this answer for details about async: Do you have to put Task.Run in a method to make it async?