Best of three, on an i7 8GB ram:

Loading a 156mb csv file in kdb 32-bit free version, single thread:

    \t trade:`sym`time`ex`cond`size`price!("STCCXH";",")0:`t.csv
    1850

in paratext, 64-bit:

    >>> timeit.timeit('paratext.load_csv_to_dict("t.csv",num_threads=4)', setup="import paratext", number=1)
    3.1176819801330566

No improvement.

Loading a 1.5GB csv file in kdb:

    \t quote:`sym`time`ex`bid`bsize`ask`asize`mode!("STCHXHXC";",")0:`q.csv
    14135

in paratext:

    >>> timeit.timeit('paratext.load_csv_to_dict("q.csv",num_threads=4)', setup="import paratext", number=1)
    12.962939977645874

Not too shabby! An almost 10% improvement over KDB by turning my fans on and burning my lap!

However, I think they should probably make their parser faster before they waste heat trying to make slow code finish sooner.