I recently gave a presentation at the New York Effective MySQL Meetup on the new features of, and some of the compelling reasons to upgrade to MySQL 5.5. There are also a number of new MySQL variables that can have a dramatic effect on performance in a highly transactional environment, innodb_buffer_pool_instances and innodb_purge_threads are just two to consider.

For more information on all the new variables, status, reserved words and benchmarks of new features you can Download Presentation Slides.