Of the two methods being currently advocated, the EQ approach involves performing simulations at fixed intermediate alchemical states such that the system remains in equilibrium throughout, whereas the NEQ approach relies on rapidly varying the alchemical state of the system such that the system is driven out of equilibrium during the simulation. We have employed both approaches in this study and we directly compare them against each other over the entire dataset. We critically assess the various features of each approach and their relative advantages including recent claims that the NEQ approach is computationally more efficient . In this respect, the present study is analogous to a similar one we recently reported for the RBFE methodology .