[riquito]

Git was by far the fastest, this was a big factor when evaluating the move from svn (or similar) to a new system.

[jordigh]

Not at all, early git was way slower than early hg. For some operations, e.g. cloning, got is still way slower.

[MBCook]

But most people were comparing it to CVS or SVN, and it was much faster than those.