Offtopic, but: Delphi benchmarks right up there with C++ for most code. The two exceptions are floating point code, which Delphi does not optimize at all, and that objects are always heap allocated in Delphi whereas they are often on the stack in C++. But for straight-ahead code, they're very similar.
(I use C++, Delphi, and Blitz, so this is speaking from experience.)
(I use C++, Delphi, and Blitz, so this is speaking from experience.)