Just for the record:

Today I repeated my benchmark, adding another competitor, a "real" PerlHandler script. (I simply took the 'clean' Apache::Registry script and wrapped it inside a proper Apache handler() sub.) These are the results:

	Requests per second
Perl script under Apache::Registry (using CGI.pm)	30
PHP script	55
Apache::Registry script, without CGI.pm	62
Apache handler	69

So if you want real performance and you ask me, the answer is clear: take mod_perl and use what it already has (and it really has a lot).