We’ve been conducting an experiment over the last 12 hours and have found on average that PinchHost is 6% faster than HostGator and 11% faster than DreamHost. This data is based on bandwidth speed and the data was generated with Derek T Del Conte’s Bandwidth Meter. The software was installed on PinchHost server ‘Raptor’, HostGator server ‘Gator476’ and DreamHost server ‘Mystique’.

We tested the speeds in the West Midlands (UK) plus Pennsylvania (US). Testing each host every hour on the hour (three times) for 12 hours. After averaging (mean method) the data, we found that PinchHost was 6% faster than HostGator and 11% faster than DreamHost.
HostGator speed was tested on on a random server, but they also provide an official speed test installation, which you can find here, this can be compared against us. DreamHost unfortunately doesn’t have an official installation.
This doesn’t include MySQL queries. We’ll be testing database related speed in the near future.