On my machine (Peg II G3) Sputnik is a little slower than f.ex. AWeb (I don't mean the lack of cache related slowness), but quite usable anyway. It is stable enough and show sufficient number of sites correctly to use it in place of AWeb. From time the second version of Sputnik appeared, AWeb practically is a history for me. :)

I don't know how fast Sputnik would be without APoller - I use this program much time before Sputnik was public available.