I have noticed a huge difference while inserting into a temp table via two different methods.

Method 1: (super fast: 4secs)

create table #temp (c1 int, c2 varchar(50), c3 varchar(50), ...)
insert into #temp
select c1, c2, c3, ...
from table1

Method 2: (normal: 57secs)

select c1, c2, c3, ...
into #temp
from table1

There are no concurrent processes on the server. Could you please clarify the difference ?