CFLOOP Query & CFOUTPUT Query

Its dependant on the way the page is built.

In CFMX6 and up there is practically no difference in performance.

Alot of people like to put a cfoutput around the entire page and then do cfloops over the queries so you dont jump in and out of outputs. This keeps the page tidier, and if its a hug page, with lots of moving between cfoutput then I expect it will slow it down.

with cfloop you cant group by a value in the query, like you can with cfoutput.

This discussion might also help:

http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/messages.cfm/threadid:38486/forumid:4 

Define a huge page ?

I use cfoutputs around each variable needed ?!?

Say for a page that has about 30 variables in it ?

Should i use just the one cfoutput ??

I would say that best practice - you should be using as few cfoutputs as possible.

If you are simply printing out a variable, and doing that 5 times in a row with some HTML in between, use one cfoutput around it all.  

If you have to output a query, use cfloop unless you need to do some funky grouping on it. This means you dont have to put cfoutput tags all over the place.