Performance in multithreaded Java application

I want to understand performance in multithreaded environments. For that I have written a small test that I ran on my machine (quad-core Intel, Windows XP, Sun JDK 1.6.0_20), with surprising results.

The test is basically a thread-safe counter that is synchronized using either the synchronized keyword or an explicit lock. Here is the code:

import java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock;

public class SynchronizedPerformance {

  static class Counter {

    private static final int MAX = 1 << 24;

    int count;
    long lastLog = 0;

    private final ReentrantLock lock = new ReentrantLock();

    private int incrementAndGet() {
      count++;
      if (count == MAX) {
        long now = System.nanoTime();
        if (lastLog != 0) {
          long elapsedTime = now - lastLog;
          System.out.printf("counting took %.2f ns\n", Double.valueOf((double)elapsedTime / MAX));
        }
        lastLog = now;
        count = 0;
      }
      return count;
    }

    synchronized int synchronizedIncrementAndGet() {
      return incrementAndGet();
    }

    int lockedIncrementAndGet() {
      lock.lock();
      try {
        return incrementAndGet();
      } finally {
        lock.unlock();
      }
    }
  }

  static class SynchronizedCounterAccessor implements Runnable {

    private final Counter counter;

    public SynchronizedCounterAccessor(Counter counter) {
      this.counter = counter;
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
      while (true)
        counter.synchronizedIncrementAndGet();
    }
  }

  static class LockedCounterAccessor implements Runnable {

    private final Counter counter;

    public LockedCounterAccessor(Counter counter) {
      this.counter = counter;
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
      while (true)
        counter.lockedIncrementAndGet();
    }
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Counter counter = new Counter();
    final int n = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
    final String mode = args[1];

    if (mode.equals("locked")) {
      for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
        new Thread(new LockedCounterAccessor(counter), "ca" + i).start();
    } else if (mode.equals("synchronized")) {
      for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
        new Thread(new SynchronizedCounterAccessor(counter), "ca" + i).start();
    } else {
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("locked|synchronized");
    }
  }
}

I made the following observations:

1. java SynchronizedPerformance 1 synchronized works pretty well, and takes about 15 ns per step.
2. java SynchronizedPerformance 2 synchronized interferes a lot and takes about 150 ns per step.
3. When I start two independent processes of java SynchronizedPerformance 2 synchronized each of them takes about 100 ns per step. That is, starting the process a second time makes the first one (and the second) faster.

I don't understand the third observation. What plausible explanations exist for this phenomenon?