I am positively amazed - I have a web hosting a/c with another "big name" hosting company and installed a CMS on it - all good. Loading posts was taking AGES - more then 40 secs to go to a page.
I've been with HG for 2 years and couldn't be more satisfied with their service and product! I moved from a shared account to a dedicated server and they worked with me to make the transistion as smooth as possible.
I ordered a dedicated server (Elite) on February 16, 2008, and it was set up within an hour or two. The next day, I used WHM / cPanel to import my accounts over from another dedicated server at another host (which, fortunately, also used WHM / cPanel).
I haven't noticed a single point of downtime in the last few months since I started. And I don't know how to check HG speed performance against other hosts but things don't seem to be a problem there either.