Yeah I guess it is for me too, but I'd like to know if the performance would be even (considerably) better without it.

I don't know about Origin, but for Steam, I use this site to know what type of DRM use the Steam games (besides Steam :P):
http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_3rd_Party_DRM_on_Steam

As for the perfomance, I read not long ago (I can't remember where though, maybe Wikipedia and in some Steam forums, usually it has to be related to DRM) that SecuROM really affected the performance of the first two Crysis games (1 and Warhead), especially the FPS with some stuttering, compared to the same games using a "cracked" EXE. I didn't remember that until I read this thread today.