A family of Microsoft relational database management systems designed for ease of use.
If you talking about a split database, then the ODBC setting you mention is not relevant and is not being used.
So, Access does not use ODBC to connect to a linked Access file (in fact you are not allowed to use an ODBC connection in Access to connect to an access database!).
So the setting you mention will not affect a typical split database, unless the back end is an ODBC database such as SQL server.
As for performance in general? That is a wide question. I would check out this really nice list of issues – some of them can dramatic speed things up:
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/performancefaq.htm
Albert D. Kallal (Access MVP)
Edmonton, Alberta Canada