I beleive the performance hit is much higher than the %2 increase you are refering to: $ cat /.../loadtest.php <?php header('Content-Type: image/png'); readfile('placeholderimage.png'); ?> $ ./ab -n 1000 -c 50 http://.../loadtest.php Time taken for tests: 1.653 seconds Complete requests: 1000 ... Requests per second: 604.96 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 82.65 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 1.65 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Transfer rate: 15177.50 [Kbytes/sec] received $ ./ab -n 1000 -c 50 http://.../placeholderimage.png Time taken for tests: 0.809 seconds Complete requests: 1000 ... Requests per second: 1236.09 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 40.45 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 0.81 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Transfer rate: 30854.14 [Kbytes/sec] received Apache 1.3.31, PHP 5.0.2 As you can see, once you move past the single request point, and actually occupy the server for a few moments the hit is far more than 2%. paul -- Paul Reinheimer -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php