Well, while browsing the Joomla performance forum, I've been noticing quite a few people asking if Joomla can be fast.  Well, I've decided to do a series of performance benchmarks agains Joomla 1.5.1 to see how it stacks up.  In this artilcle, I will compare Joomla 1.0, 1.5 RC1, 1.5 RC3, and 1.5.1 with each other in a series of different test scenarios.  I'm posting the raw (graphed) output, and will let you draw your own conclusions from it. 

Note, I am also presently working on future benchmarks comparing different methods to "speed" up Joomla 1.5.1, ranging from the different session backends, to a full blown load balanced cluster.  Keep tuned here, as I will post results as I get them.