Why does your application run so slowly? I bet you think it's the algorithms or the fact that you are starting all your services instead of using extension points. It runs so slowly because there is a fat man sitting on it. No one can run fast when they are carrying that much dead weight.
In this introductory paper—which follows the course of the papers included in this special issue—we argue that there are currently four main apprehensions of performance. The first of those apprehensions is provided by the work of Judith Butler on performativity. We then move to a second apprehension—the rather more general notion of performance found in nonrepresentational theory, using as an example the work of Gilles Deleuze. The third apprehension of performance is that taken from work found in the discipline of performance itself. Then, the fourth apprehension concerns the reworking of academic practices as performative.
The best benchmark for a piece of graphics hardware is your own actual application, not some marketing benchmark number claimed by some hardware vendor hyping their own hardware.
If you have a busy PostgreSQL or MySQL database application, you might want to analyze the queries to see if they can be improved. Here's a little utility to help with that.