Table variables are indeed very slow when processing even moderately sized result sets. I have a proc that produces, in one use case, about 2200 rows. This table variable needs to be joined(or updated) with another couple of tables which can be large to get the desired results. The table variable with umpteen hours of tuning still gets the job done in about 16 seconds and the temp table version of the exact same proc gets it done in 2 seconds. Go figure ...