I have a localhost test wiki that was using Apache PHP 5.5, which I downgraded back to PHP 5.4.

While 5.5 did deliver better response time for most things like page requests, I suffered severe lag and server timeouts when attempting to do multiple page moves and especially page deletions.

On PHP 5.4, the response time is slightly slower for almost all operations, but I do not have the lag and timeout issues I experienced on 5.5.

I do not know if this is common to all users of Apache PHP 5.5, so I do not know if this is a common issue, but I felt it wouldn't hurt to share with the rest of MediaWiki community.

Also, if using the XAMPP stack, I recommend XAMPP 1.8.2 over 1.8.3 since the former has PHP 5.4 and the latter PHP 5.5