I always wondered if those ext* mountoptions did anything performance wise. Turns out they do, kind of:

FS   mount option    avg over 3 runs
------------------------------------
ext2 option: orlov        - 56.3333 sec
ext2 option: oldalloc     - 66.3333 sec
ext2 option: atime        - 62.6667 sec
ext2 option: noatime      - 57.3333 sec
ext2 option: data=journal   ---
ext2 option: data=ordered   ---
ext2 option: data=writeback ---
ext2 option: acl          - 59 sec
ext2 option: noacl        - 57.6667 sec
ext2 option: user_xattr   - 59 sec
ext2 option: nouser_xattr - 59 sec

ext3 option: orlov        - 61.3333 sec
ext3 option: oldalloc     - 62.3333 sec
ext3 option: atime        - 62.3333 sec
ext3 option: noatime      - 60.6667 sec
ext3 option: data=journal   - 114 sec
ext3 option: data=ordered   - 62.6667 sec
ext3 option: data=writeback - 61.6667 sec
ext3 option: acl          - 62.6667 sec
ext3 option: noacl        - 61.6667 sec
ext3 option: user_xattr   - 64.3333 sec
ext3 option: nouser_xattr - 60.6667 sec

ext4 option: orlov        - 49.6667 sec
ext4 option: oldalloc     - 52.6667 sec
ext4 option: atime        - 49.6667 sec
ext4 option: noatime      - 50 sec
ext4 option: data=journal   - 101.333 sec
ext4 option: data=ordered   - 49.3333 sec
ext4 option: data=writeback - 51 sec
ext4 option: acl          - 48.6667 sec
ext4 option: noacl        - 51.6667 sec
ext4 option: user_xattr   - 49.6667 sec
ext4 option: nouser_xattr - 50.6667 sec

This was done by a script extracting a ~800MB tarball onto a freshly created ext* filesystem, 3 times in a row.