I just finished reading an excellent article by David Bell on performance tuning Subversion in relation to binary file storage. Binary files are much large that ASCII/text files and thus require (and create) more overhead on the Subversion server. The article discussions various binary storage formats and compares and contrasts their differences. Other topics include how repository authentication and the hardware running a Subversion repository play a role in the performance of check-in and check-out operations.

If you manage a Subversion repository or server, or are just interested in the topic, I highly recommend this article.

View the article:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-svnbins.html?ca=dgr-lnxw01javapts