Big Columns Don’t Bloat Logical Reads—SQL Server Keeps Them Off‑Row
When a row’s wide columns exceed an 8 KB page, SQL Server pushes them off‑row, so point lookups still hit a single page. For multi‑row scans, forcing large value types off‑row with sp_tableoption shrinks logical reads and speeds queries that don’t need those columns. The trick lets you keep JSON or XML payloads without hurting performance.