I'm just trying to figure out what I can do to free up/better performance on the phone.
Usually, you can get best synthetic benchmark performance by simply doing a factory data reset (reset Google Wallet first if you have it, inside the Wallet app), thereby erasing all of your apps and data, and as soon as the phone boots, start running the benchmark repeatedly until the score starts to go up.
Android = Linux + Dalvik Virtual Machine + apps that run inside the Dalvik and call Linux services.
Synthetic benchmarks are typically just showing how quickly some (not all by any means) software functions can access Linux services.
They are good for "order of magnitude" readings only, not exactly "numbers side by side" - and they have to be interpreted with respect to the software functions and services being called. One - few benchmark authors get specific about that, two - your favorite apps might not even being using those functions in particular, or using them very much.
Hence - "order of magnitude."
My One X variant tends to score over 5k pretty consistently on Quadrant. But there's no way I'd tell someone that it's twice as fast and smooth as a Galaxy Nexus. It scores a little above a Nexus on AnTuTu and that seems about right - but that's probably just as coincidental as anything given that we all run different things on our phones.
Anyway, erasing everything so the synthetic benchmark can hog resources will raise scores - but it won't matter to real world use.
If your phone is running really laggy, regardless of the benchmarks, then, if it were me, I'd focus on that - looking to see if I restored a huge SMS backup (now that can lag just about anything) for example.
Anyway, cheers gang, nice benchmarks, enjoy your SGS3!!