Jeff,

So, it was a fairly small dataset, one table had a couple hundred rows. The other had 3 rows. And, I can certainly see that as the row count got bigger that you might see a difference appear.

When, I did my testing I started using SQL Server Profiler. Not seeing any difference there, I wrote a .NET program so I could count Ticks to see if I'd see any difference with that level of precision. I was expecting that because you're doing two queries in the first procedure, it would take longer. Maybe not twice as long, but longer still. I ran the procedures 10 to 15 times each. I knew that the first time the procedure would be compiled and an execution plan stored. So, I wanted to run several times to see what it would really be like. And like I said, there was zero difference... Not even one tick different.