Contiguity, a semblance of control over what stays in cache what doesn't and potential for vectorization is precisely the reason that I use std:vector when I do. I cannot emphasize this enough. Getting the cache behavior correct pretty much makes or breaks my code, in the sense it often dominates performance characteristics once I have got the algorithm correct. One can have speedups of several tens of multipliers. You may work on a project where performance is irrelevant, but that does not mean performance is universally irrelevant.
In short std:vector has served me well, I dont want it to lose performance.
In short std:vector has served me well, I dont want it to lose performance.