  Recent advances in our understanding of tree-level QCD amplitudes in the
massless limit exploiting an effective (maximal) supersymmetry have led to the
complete analytic construction of tree-amplitudes with up to four external
quark-anti-quark pairs. In this work we compare the numerical efficiency of
evaluating these closed analytic formulae to a numerically efficient
implementation of the Berends-Giele recursion. We compare calculation times for
tree-amplitudes with parton numbers ranging from 4 to 25 with no, one, two and
three external quark lines. We find that the exact results are generally faster
in the case of MHV and NMHV amplitudes. Starting with the NNMHV amplitudes the
Berends-Giele recursion becomes more efficient. In addition to the runtime we
also compared the numerical accuracy. The analytic formulae are on average more
accurate than the off-shell recursion relations though both are well suited for
complicated phenomenological applications. In both cases we observe a reduction
in the average accuracy when phase space configurations close to singular
regions are evaluated. We believe that the above findings provide valuable
information to select the right method for phenomenological applications.
