Linuxdevices.com has an article by Clark Williams (Red Hat) comparing the pre-emption patch, and the low latency patch. He includes performance graphs, and most interestingly, the performance benefits of using both patches. It's good to see that two different approaches can be combined to come up with even better results.
both patches
After reading this article I applied both patches to the 2.4.17 (I was running 2.4.18 with preempt applied). The system seems much snappier than before.