I know that performance never is black and white, often one implementation is faster in case X and slower in case Y, etc. but in general - are B-trees faster then AVL or RedBlack-Trees? They are considerably more complex to implement then AVL trees (and maybe even RedBlack-trees?), but are they *faster* (does their complexity pay off) ?

**Edit:** I should also like to add that if they are faster then the equivalent AVL/RedBlack tree (in terms of nodes/content) - *why* are they faster?