Microsoft SQL Server does this as well with [n]varchar(max) as any size that exceeds a data pages 8k size goes off to a special different data page. tl;dr; CPU

Microsoft SQL Server does this as well with [n]varchar(max) as any size that exceeds a data pages 8k size goes off to a special different data page. tl;dr; CPU cache sizes are small and text is large. Using numeric fields will always be faster. "hackyhacky" is equal to 1.25 Int64s.