I did test it and it definitely does make a difference.
Krah and I have identical HDDs, full 2Tbs. He is thinking of the boot time without HDD Games List Cache enabled, which is ~50 seconds. It's ~20 seconds enabled and we have the +OPL partition directly after the system partitions.
Ah damn, yeah I forgot about that, I only tested manually.
Instead of setting INTROLDR.ELF as AUTO E1 Launch Key, set it as circle or something. Hold the button when you power on then let go.
In the 'intro.cfg' have no exit path specified.
In FMCB/FHDB Configurator go to 'Configure OSDSYS options...'
Set 'Go to Browser:' to 'Force OFF'
Should work, I just tested it :D