I just spent two days determining if the table variable approach was faster than the CURSOR approach.  It was a no-brainer.  The CURSOR approach was faster.  And it became even faster when I created my CURSOR with LOCAL FAST_FORWARD.

With the TV approach your reads go up significantly.  Then duration time might go down a little but not enough to make up for the increase in reads.  And it was very inconsistent.  Somtimes it went up and sometimes it went down.

With LOCAL FAST_FORWARD added to by CURSORs my reads and duration dropped significantly.

Here are my results on the CURSOR test.

CURSOR without LOCAL FAST_FORWARD

CPU---250

READS---14320

DURATON---750

CURSOR with LOCAL FAST_FORWARD

CPU -- 172

READS -- 10216

DURATION -- 283

The DURATION went from 750 to 283!!!!!

I spent the rest of the day changing all of our CURSORS to LOCAL FAST_FOWARD!