In my experience, urxvt is both faster and uses less memory than xterm by a good margin, although there's not such an appreciable difference on a modern system.

In my experience, urxvt is both faster and uses less memory than xterm by a good margin, although there's not such an appreciable difference on a modern system. Gnome Terminal, on the other hand, is beyond slow, far worse than the still slow but acceptable Konsole.