Benefit of asterisk vs nested IF in multiple IF criteria formulae

[kcmuppet]

Hello,

I'm curious about whether there is a benefit in using a "*" to effectively separate / multiply criteria in IF functions vs nesting.

For example...

=INDEX(Table1[Color],MATCH(MAX( IF ( Table1[Item]="T-shirt" , IF (Table1[Size]="Large" , Table1[Time] ) ) ),Table1[Time],0))
vs
=INDEX(Table1[Color],MATCH(MAX( IF ( (Table1[Item]="T-shirt") * (Table1[Size]="Large"), Table1[Time] ) ) ,Table1[Time],0))

...seem to produce the same result, but is one any more efficient that another? Or is there some other relative benefit?

I have a table of ~8k rows and 45+ columns to search and ~35 of these formulae to populate another table, and sometimes 2-3 of these themselves subject to IF criteria in the same formula.
I have to stick to things that work for Excel 2010 so can't later alternatives.

 

[kcmuppet]

Thank you. Since you had pointed to expanding range I has played around with it trying to use a combined cell reference for the first (anchor) part and structured table references for the rest, but got nowhere.

 

[jasonb75]

Trying to simplify it, I think that this will work correctly with the table but have only done a very quick test.

=COUNTIFS(B$22:B23,B24,D$22:D23,D24,E$22:E23,E24,C$22:C23,"<="&C24)+1

Note that this would not work if the column headers were directly comparable to the data in the same column (entry identical to header, use of wildcards with similarity to headers or using < or > with text data).