I doubt this oft-repeated stereotype was every particularly accurate. I'm not aware of any current Gentoo users on the distro specifically for performance reasons. Gentoo users are in it for control over their system and customization.

https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2023/May/20-years-of-gentoo/#an...

> In the early days, there was much promotion of Gentoo as being “faster”, because you could compile everything based on your particular processor, etc. And you could increase the optimization level for a boost. Their web site still touts this as a reason to use Gentoo.

> In reality, the performance is more or less the same as on any other distribution. The folks who stick to Gentoo tend not to care about performance as much. Unfortunately, this perception of Gentoo remains, and I wish they would remove the verbiage from their site.