Not anymore: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2013/07/11/introduci...
i would not call that an improvement in all cases... the extra code produced by enabling exceptions, even for the latest compilers, produces enough bloat and slow down for basically everyone seriously concerned with real-time performance to turn them off.
small simple functions are forced to have prologue/epilogue, use a frame pointer and to preserve the return address on the stack. doesn't sound like much, but if your function does anything simple (float f() { return 1; } bool g(float a, float b) { return a < b; } etc...) you spend all the time paying for exceptions instead of the intended functionality.
there is a table i remember in some doc about this, the only reason i listed from memory was the lack of being able to find it quickly on google
.. its a shame i can't find it. perhaps my memory is imply faulty.