$ time for i in {1..1000000}; { echo $i; } >/dev/null
real    0m8,792s
user    0m8,453s
sys     0m0,336s

$ time echo {1..1000000} >/dev/null
real    0m1,566s
user    0m1,564s
sys     0m0,001s

$ time awk 'BEGIN {for (i=1; i<1000000; ++i) print i}' >/dev/null
real    0m0,500s
user    0m0,488s
sys     0m0,012s