Yes.

In addition, Intel and Intel-like processors offer a hardware counter which counts the number of CPU oscillations since power-up.

Assembler sequences (which are highly dependent on the platform and compiler) exist for reading these high performance tick counts. You can search for the terms "cpuid" and "rdtsc", which are the names of relevant Intel assembler opcodes in this matter.

We covered this rather large topic very briefly a while ago here:

http://www.codeguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=329326

- Chris