Originally Posted by Babaganoosh

Yep, it matters. I try to make sure all of my sites score at least 85 on Google page speed. If it's a newer site, I aim for 90 or better but that's often difficult with legacy code.

I had two small niche sites that were 3rd page on shared hosting. I moved them to a dedicated and they were 1st page within a month or so without much new content. They just went from 60 something to 87 on page speed. Might just be a coincidence too. Who knows.