Chris, good link, and it basically describes the underlying problems that cause the ~16ms or 3.3 ms for getdate() and no better precision then 1 ms for sysdatatetime(). I guess some OS configurations expose the higher percision timer to SQL Server so this is why some people come with the 3.33ms for getdate(). It might be because of SP versions on the OS or SQL Sevrer and also the boot.ini switch. There is some indication in the article that Microsoft recently introduced some means of exposing a higher precision timers to the SQL Sevrer with the new service packs. That might explain why some people can get better results then the ~16ms I got in my tests.

Most precision timers under Windows are tick counters and are good at calculating the time difference - not the current time. The getdate() and sysdatetime() functions are only as precise as the underlying OS timer.