I did tests a while ago when I first requested the feature (it was a bit hacky, but it worked). I got far more than a 5 times performance boost -- there's far more information in the original thread, somewhere in the archives of the future forum probably. Differences in ratio would vary largely according to how up-to-date the user's CPU is compared to their GPU.

All I was saying is it doesn't appear to be the amount of bones that would be giving people performance issues, it's the amount of vertices. Although, that's compounded by bone-blending functions. Still -- unless an obscene amount of bones are being used, I would've thought the amount of bones would be one of the least important factors.

Jibb