Sorry, just realized I compared apples to oranges. The Perl version that used 2GB was collecting Imager objects in the array, while MCE was using scalars. When changed to collect scalars plain Perl used the same amount of RAM as MCE, about 1GB, but then it was even slower than MCE: 
real	4m50.307s Perl
real	5m24.204s Perl
real	5m26.991s Perl

real	1m16.036s MCE
real	1m29.944s MCE
real	1m28.977s MCE
For some reason my CPU frequency is different when comparing the plain Perl version to MCE. MCE sends it straight to 3GHz while the plain Perl hangs out around 2-2.5GHz. I don't know why that happens but it must contribute to the difference...

In reply to Re^3: MCE segmentation fault by Anonymous Monk
in thread MCE segmentation fault by Anonymous Monk

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