>>How I wish there was a sp_configure GO_MUCH_FASTER 1 setting to play with.

This configuration exists - and is known as hiring TheSQLGuru to give your system a performance review. 😀

Seriously though, hiring a tuning professional to get your system whooped into shape (while mentoring you on how to do this in the future) can be an incredibly rewarding exercise both for the company and yourself. There are a kajillion things at play here that a good tuner already knows - things like checking for excessive parallelization and indexing opportunities which you professed to not thinking of. You can hunt and peck on this forum for months and not get one tenth the way to optimizing your system that a consultant could do in a week (or even a few days if the expected few magic bullets are uncovered).