- Are the tests done in equal conditions? (cold caches, same load, averages from 10 tests not just single result, etc.)
- Is memcached working and setup properly? Connect via telnet to memcached host/port and try STATS command to see if new items are added/accessed. It may be that something is misconfigured and the connection is timing out.
- Maybe TCP_NODELAY is not enabled in the client? What's loopback's interface MTU? if it's > 1500 try setting to 1500.
- File max_open_files limit too low? Check file limits, it may be that memcached is timing out waiting for OS handles to free.
In general i think impossible that properly configured client/server could make any php website to work considerably slower.