Hmmm... THAT is a very subjective question! Everyone has his favourite. Okay:
Dev-C++. free from
www.bloodshed.com. seems to work fine for most new users (must be idiot-proof)
Visual Studio .NET student edition (NOT best but rather known)
VCToolkit
Visual Studio
GCC
I have a personnal preference for djgpp, and I've tried lots of compilers (Borland, Turbo, VC++, MingW, Digital Mars...). As an editor, I prefer Crimson Editor.
HOWEVER, those I consider the best C++ compilers for Windows are :
GNU BloodShed at
http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html, rated 1st (the VERY best among all)
Borland C++ compiler
http://www.borland.com/bcppbuilder/freecompiler, rated 2nd
Microsoft Visual C++ compiler
http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc, rated 3rd
MSDOS C++ compiler
http://www.delorie.com/djgpp (odd, I know!!)
But I believe people would rather choose depending on what they need:
How can you compare a particular C++ compiler with others?
By checking whether it fully supports the ISO C++ Standard. That should
sort out the REAL compilers. After that, just try a few and see how
FAST they can make *your* programs run.
If you have particularly non-optimized [but otherwise efficient]
code, GCC can produce faster code.
Benchmarks: don't believe 'em.
Hope this isnt too confusing...