Big gears are a major trend of the last decade or so. If you look at vids from the 80's or earlier it's clear even the top pro's rarely went much bigger than 90". These days, for olympic level riders 105" might be considered small. That is a huge difference.
What that means to you is debatable. It's still definitely possible to go fast on an 88" in amateur races. But as Quinn said, the trend is definitely towards bigger. And people and various levels of the sport are going faster now than in the past. How big a role the big gears plays in that is open to interpretation, but the consensus from people who are tuned into the sport and open minded about it generally agree that bigger is better, again depending upon context.