Check whats your need, if you are building up much bigger apps go for a fully fledged framework, rest for small apps you can use microrouters , according to your need, each has its own unique features.
Although, doing it without a router is probably always going to be faster.
php_value auto_prepend_file 'before.php'
I personally would still prefer a router but I know of a project which was written almost entirely in sprawling, procedural PHP that might benefit from this. Although I do wonder what the performance hit would be.