With the release of latest version of PHP, v5.2, one the biggest improvements where performance enhancements. So I decided to benchmark v5.2 vs v5.1 to see the impact of the new changes since I think many are looking forward to this release.

The benchmark was conducted on one computer where I first loaded PHP 5.1.6 then PHP 5.2.0, and only the PHP software changed. This benchmark was based on the PHP Benchmark suite available here:
http://phplens.com/benchmark_suite/

Note: All results displayed in seconds, so basically you always want a smaller number.

Note: Both PHP versions where on Apache 2.0.53. Ubuntu's PHP 5.1.6 binary package was used for 5.1, and PHP 5.2.0 was compiled from source using default options (-02 Optimization).
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PHP v5.2 vs PHP v5.1