Long delay while passing through TList of large records

Question

I am using Delphi 10.1 Berlin on Windows 10.

I have two records of different sizes. I wrote code to go through TList<T>these two entries to check past tenses. Looping through a larger record list is much slower.

Can someone explain the reason and provide a solution so that the cycle runs faster?

type
  tTestRecord1 = record
    Field1: array[0..4] of Integer;
    Field2: array[0..4] of Extended;
    Field3: string;
  end;

  tTestRecord2 = record
    Field1: array[0..4999] of Integer;
    Field2: array[0..4999] of Extended;
    Field3: string;
  end;

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
  _List: TList<tTestRecord1>;
  _Record: tTestRecord1;
  _Time: TTime;
  i: Integer;
begin
  _List := TList<tTestRecord1>.Create;

  for i := 0 to 4999 do
  begin
    _List.Add(_Record);
  end;

  _Time := Time;

  for i := 0 to 4999 do
  begin
    if _List[i].Field3 = 'abcde' then
    begin
      Break;
    end;
  end;

  Button1.Caption := FormatDateTime('s.zzz', Time - _Time); // 0.000

  _List.Free;
end;

procedure TForm1.Button2Click(Sender: TObject);
var
  _List: TList<tTestRecord2>;
  _Record: tTestRecord2;
  _Time: TTime;
  i: Integer;
begin
  _List := TList<tTestRecord2>.Create;

  for i := 0 to 4999 do
  begin
    _List.Add(_Record);
  end;

  _Time := Time;

  for i := 0 to 4999 do
  begin
    if _List[i].Field3 = 'abcde' then
    begin
      Break;
    end;
  end;

  Button2.Caption := FormatDateTime('s.zzz', Time - _Time); // 0.045

  _List.Free;
end;

Answer 1

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var
  tmp: tTestRecord2;
...
tmp := _List[i]; // copy of entire record
if tmp.Field3 = 'abcde' then

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:

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}

uses
  System.Diagnostics,
  System.Generics.Collections;

type
  tTestRecord2 = record
    Field1: array[0..4999] of Integer;
    Field2: array[0..4999] of Extended;
    Field3: string;
  end;

procedure Main;
const
  N = 100000;
var
  i: Integer;
  Stopwatch: TStopwatch;
  List: TList<tTestRecord2>;
  Rec: tTestRecord2;
begin
  List := TList<tTestRecord2>.Create;
  List.Capacity := N;

  for i := 0 to N-1 do
  begin
    List.Add(Rec);
  end;

  Stopwatch := TStopwatch.StartNew;
  for i := 0 to N-1 do
  begin
    if List[i].Field3 = 'abcde' then
    begin
      Break;
    end;
  end;
  Writeln(Stopwatch.ElapsedMilliseconds);
end;

begin
  Main;
  Readln;
end.

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