The posting I made on drupal.org (http://drupal.org/node/346838): Usage of complex CCKs does come at a performance cost, since, the tables are not optimized. I have worked on Drupal performance and could get quite exceptional results with few of the techniques for some of the clients. Here are couple of things, that would make your Drupal site run quite fast:

Objective C Tutorial

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APC

Ways to Cache variables in PHP

Install APC (Alternative PHP Cache)

Drupal Warning: Duplicate entry 'variables' for key 1 query: INSERT INTO cache

Performance Improvements in Drupal