As much as people like to make fun of PHP, symfony2 has the best development toolbar I've ever seen, with the previous winner from symfony1.
http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r8&hw=i7...
One framework for PHP developers that is worth looking into is Laravel. Very clean and reasonable framework. Have a look at it here: http://laravel.com/
For example, it has ActiveRecord by default, so you're focued around data stores... ideal for CRUD, but then its libraries to generate and validate forms are like something from 2008.
I'm a bit bemused as I must be missing something, given its popularity. Perhaps the apps I build are not a good fit for it - I'd be keen to have your input.
But not released yet, no vibrant community, it is like sensio's internal framework before symfony was released.
If you want to compare performance, do it yourself, don't believe someone else's benchmarks. Write a test case that is suitable for your reality, then go for a conclusion.
http://i.imgur.com/3d9sqFa.png
The sparkline in the bottom status bar lets you keep an eye on server request performance (single page app), and clicking it allows to see the details of the past 100 requests, including what DB calls were made and what parameters were used (great for finding slow queries and pulling them out to test and tune in isolation). The server tab gives overall php server and database statistics.
Our product has gotten a lot faster since integrating this, and I don't think that's a coincidence. It is extremely useful, and not just for performance optimization.