Typically, the overhead of creating and reading a PCH file is small, even for reasonably large header files. If the PCH file is used, there is typically a significant decrease in compilation time. However, PCH files can range in size from about 250KB to several megabytes or more, so you might not want to create many PCH files.

PCH processing might not always be appropriate, for example, where you have an arbitrary set of files with non-uniform initial sequences of preprocessing directives.

The benefits of PCH processing occur when several source files can share the same PCH file. The more sharing, the less disk space is consumed. Sharing minimizes the disadvantage of large PCH files, without giving up the advantage of a significant decrease in compilation times.

Therefore, to take full advantage of header file precompilation, you might have to re-order the #include sections of your source files, or group #include directives within a commonly used header file.

Different environments and different projects might have differing requirements. Be aware, however, that making the best use of PCH support might require some experimentation and probably some minor changes to source code.