PHP4 vs. PHP5 test case for objects question.....

I ran a test on the same machine for php4(port 80) vs. php5(port 8080). Using the exact same code, I created 50 objects. It took twice as long in php5 as it did in the older php4. I then ran a test to access a property of the class using a method of the class. Again, php5 was almost exactly twice as slow as php4. Is it possible that php5 (I'm using the latest beta) is somehow compiled with extra debugging code or something like that? I was under the impression that php5 was going to better handle objects. Does this mean that it might be "better" but also slower? My biggest problem right now with PHP5 is that creating and using objects is pretty darn slow. I'm a tad discouraged with these results. Is there anything in the php.ini file that might be "tunable" for performance considerations? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Dick