It's almost certainly faster, yes. As far as whether the gains are negligible or not, that's a very debatable topic. It really depends on how many requests you're serving, what utilization you're seeing on your system already, etc. etc. There are too many variables to say how much of an effect it's going to have without testing in your specific environment. It should be at least a small gain, though. ;)
Thanks for the follow-up!
Colin