[_ck_]

One possible way to benchmark the performance is to run these two queries in phpmyadmin (via SQL tab)

SELECT SQL_NO_CACHE t.* FROM bb_topics AS t   USE INDEX(topic_time)  WHERE t.topic_status = '0' AND t.topic_sticky != '2'   ORDER BY t.topic_time DESC LIMIT 25

vs.

SELECT SQL_NO_CACHE t.* FROM bb_topics AS t  WHERE t.topic_status = '0' AND t.topic_sticky != '2'   ORDER BY t.topic_time DESC LIMIT 25

On my setup the one with the forced index takes half the time of the one without, however we are talking 0.0026 sec vs 0.0013 sec so that is almost meaningless. What we need is someone with 10,000 topics and then you’ll know for certain.