Or think about it this way, when I drive my 140 hp civic, I can chirp my tires in 2nd, but when I drive the 260 hp automatic, when it goes from one to two, there's no way they can chirp unless I'm in triptonic.
That means that going from one to two in the manual I change the gear fast enough so that my rpms stay high enough in seocond for me to chirp my tires, but in the automatic the rpms go almost all the way back down by the time I'm in second.
Unless you have an SMG, most of the time you'll be able to shift faster with a manual if you know how to drive, it's a fact.