I havent been to the track since I had my AEM installed and tuned. Before I was on on a stock Z1 chipped ecu and I ran a 12.14 at 112. My 60' was 1.81, 1/8th mile was 7.85 at 90. This was at 15 psi and I am tuned at 19 psi now. It made 386whp on a dyno dynamics, so add 10 to 20% and that is the actual whp. As far as cost effective, it is worth being able to have it tuned when needed as well as being able to check almost any parameter available. Having it setup on MAP vs MAF is nice also. The 2 step and 3 step (NLTS) are just a bonus, so hopefully my track times drop quite a bit with more features and a much better tune.