• In my experience the majority of the queries that need to be tuned are ones that run against active data, not against stuff that must first be pulled up from disk into RAM. Some exceptions to this exist, especially in data warehousing loads, first-page-view web scenarios, etc. Besides, if you make the query most efficient often IO reduction is part of that anyway.

    Best,
    Kevin G. Boles
    SQL Server Consultant
    SQL MVP 2007-2012
    TheSQLGuru on googles mail service