As a data point; my own family research is 4000 people, 13000 Events, 2500 places.
My machine running Ubuntu,Intel(R) Core™2 Duo CPU T5470 @ 1.60GHz, 4Gb RAM
Since I choose to have places in a hierarchy all the way down to house number (number->street->district->town->county->country) I chose a village with 15 places.
This leads to 96 Events, which leads to 69 people (to save keying I share Residence Events)
Rough timings (fresh Gramps start each time)
Places: 3
Events: 6.8
People: 5.0
(No, I don’t understand why the Events filter is slower than the People filter which literally USES the Event filter)