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Timing results on my machine:
(Canopy 64bit) taniyama:~ mdickinson$ python3 -m timeit -s "from math import sqrt; x = 3.14" "sqrt(x)"
10000000 loops, best of 3: 0.0426 usec per loop
(Canopy 64bit) taniyama:~ mdickinson$ python3 -m timeit -s "from math import sqrt; x = 3.14" "x**0.5"
10000000 loops, best of 3: 0.0673 usec per loop
And the disassembly showing the peephole optimizer at work:
>>> def f(): return 3.14**0.5
... 
>>> import dis
>>> dis.dis(f)
 1 0 LOAD_CONST 3 (1.772004514666935)
 3 RETURN_VALUE