"kcc" wrote...
....
Out of force of habit, I would use
=MIN(IF(E2:E14&G2:G14=A17&B17,A2:A14))
....
Are there any tests/studies of excel performance for various
functions and/or formula structure?

Roll your own tests. It's not that hard.

Generally text operations take more time than arithmetic operations, and
concatenation is especially time consuming. Also, which this approach
probably wouldn't cause problems with the OP's data, it's not robust in
general. If both columns E and G were arbitrary text, there's the chance
that E#<A17 and G#<B17 but E#&G#=A17&B17. Once you add a concatenated
separator on each side of the comparison you're not saving much typing and
it's very unlikely you're doing anything other than wasting cycles.