Custom Post Types are more convinient and easy to implement, so I suggest you use them.
Also the Posts will be ready to make a blog section in the future.
About optimizing.
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Use some caching plugin, there are lots of them in WordPress Plugin Directory.
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Turn off the revisions to save database size: add
define ('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 0);
into wp-config.php -
And try to use as less plugins as possible. Only what you really need.