Wacky Performance Problem w/ Windows

Hello, I'd really like to start using php4 on my NT machines, but the performance seems completely wacky. I can understand the windows version lagging behind unix, but when there's multiple orders of magnitude difference in speed, I get confused. Leaving aside the fact that IIS4/isapi php is so much slower for a sec.. Php4 on windows parses php (stuff within <? tags ?>) between 2 and 5 times faster than html. Here are outlines of the test files that I have been using: File 1: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx repeat 998 times here ... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx File 2: <? print 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'; repeat 998 times here ... print 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'; ?> I have tried IIS4/isapi, IIS4/cgi, Apache/cgi, all on windows, and get the same results: File 2 is much faster than File 1. And all are around 50 times slower than the same file on linux/apache/mod_php. If this cannon be explained (I really hope someone has a reason/possible fix), let this email be a tip to anyone on the windows platform. You can speed up the godawful performance on windows by enclosing your entire html in <? print ?> statements. I myself have improved the loading of my homepage from 7 seconds to 3.5 seconds, just by taking major blocks of html and using the magic - <? print <<<EOF Fun feature of php4. EOF; ?> The thing that seriously confuses me, is that php3 doesn't at all suffer from near the same performance problems. I have posted similar pleas of confusion and frustration on PHP-WINDOWS and Zend.com / Forums / PHP General with no replies. Please help me. -joel