speed of FC5 vs next Ubuntu

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

I'm just reading Mad Penguin's preview/review of the next Ubuntu
    http://madpenguin.org/cms/index.php/?m=show&id=6699&page=1

On page two, he throws out the comment:

    Performance with this release was very good. It's been a while
    since I reviewed Ubuntu 5.10, but it feels faster to me. Call me
    crazy. It definitely outperformed Fedora Core 5 on the same
    machine. Hands down.

Not a very analytical statement.  Does anyone know if this is true?
If so, why?


(BTW, I found the excitement of the reviewer nice, but the content was
not very useful to me.)