No, I think Mark answered this one before. I don't absolutely recall his answer, but I think it amounted to "CopyEntity can be quick, but it's not guaranteed to be". I don't know for sure if it varies on different computers/videocards or whether it varies depending on how you use it.
Combining surfaces yourself manually gives me a lot of speed improvement every time I've done it.
Combining surfaces yourself manually gives me a lot of speed improvement every time I've done it.