how to adjust Fedora performance

[Mr. MMH]

i've tried Debian Sarge "testing" Distro it is running as fast as WIN98 on my box but i like fedora more than it but fedora runs too slow on my pc how can i make fedora runs faster just like debian i hacked the kernel many times with best configration for my PC & it runs a better than the default one but slower than the debian's .

i don't know what's the diffrence which make this big drop in the performance , debian is faster than fedora & the 2 distros contains the same versions of Packages :( , i realy like fedora & i need to adjust it's performance .

another thing : which the best program to make a backup with master boot recorded in it [partimage - ghost4linux - dd with gzip]again with master boot backed on it ????

many thanks for Your Support .
fedora lover