sql vs access on my server.

I've setup two forums on my server.
One is access: http://129.125.101.174/c4dportal/forum/default.asp
Database size: 10 mb

One is sqlserver:http://129.125.101.174/c4dportal2/forum/default.asp
Database size: 42 mb

Access database has been ported upsized to sql. It looks like it's too large, because I've seen Borg post a message where he said his database is 30 mb.

average load time default.asp page on access: 0.8125 seconds. 
average load time default.asp page on sql     : 1.3828 seconds.

Load time when searching for ''the'' on access: 0.5400 seconds.
Load time when searching for ''the'' on sql: 0.9510 seconds. 
(84 results)

It looks like access is faster here. Question here is...is it caused by the sql database that is probably too large, or not entirely correct because of upsizing (forum is working 100 % though), or does sql become faster once the post count is fairly large (currently have 9000 posts on my forum)?

42 seems to be way to big, run the following in your QA
BACKUP LOG databasename WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
DBCC Shrinkdatabase (databasename)

It should shrink your db quite a bit. I have noticed that Access upsized databases have a lot of free pages in the db and some maintanance is acutally a must afterwards

For smaller databases Access can sometimes be quicker becuase of the way the different systems work, but as databases get bigger SQL server is always far superior.

With Access you have a flat file instead of a server, with the flat file of access the entire database needs to be loaded into memory, this means that with smaller databases it is sometimes faster for things like searches as the data is in memory.

Also with Access the file is local and loaded into the local servers memory, with SQL server, often the SQL server database is located on another server, this can mean that sometimes you have delays on the network trnasffering data between the servers.