Which of these two queries is the least resource intensive?

Question

MySQL

I torture DLE requests. You need to select all posts from 1 category.
conditionally, there are posts dle_post (posts still have a second plate, with numbers. i.e. total -4th dle_post_extras ):
post_id | title | ...
categories dle_category :
cat_id | title | ...
link through table dle_category_map :
post_id | category_id
Option 1:

EXPLAIN SELECT p.id, p.autor, p.date, p.short_story, CHAR_LENGTH(p.full_story) as full_story, p.xfields, p.title, p.category, p.alt_name, p.comm_num, p.allow_comm, p.fixed, e.news_read, e.allow_rate, e.rating, e.likes, e.dislikes, e.vote_num, e.votes, e.view_edit, e.editdate, e.editor, e.reason 
FROM `dle_post` AS p USE INDEX (cat_posts)
  INNER JOIN `dle_category_map` AS cm ON ( p.id = cm.news_id AND cm.cat_id=11) 
LEFT JOIN dle_post_extras e ON (e.news_id=p.id) 
WHERE approve=1 AND date < (NOW() + INTERVAL 0 MINUTE) 
ORDER BY fixed desc, date DESC LIMIT 1536,32

explain:

| id | select_type | table | type   | possible_keys | key       | key_len | ref                      | rows | Extra       |
|----|-------------|-------|--------|---------------|-----------|---------|--------------------------|------|-------------|
| 1  | SIMPLE      | p     | ref    | cat_posts     | cat_posts | 1       | const                    | 8887 | Using where |
| 1  | SIMPLE      | cm    | eq_ref | PRIMARY       | PRIMARY   | 8       | hdvideoscript.p.id,const | 1    | Using index |
| 1  | SIMPLE      | e     | ref    | news_id       | news_id   | 4       | hdvideoscript.p.id       | 1    | NULL        |

option 2:

EXPLAIN SELECT p.id, p.autor, p.date, p.short_story, CHAR_LENGTH(p.full_story) as full_story, p.xfields, p.title, p.category, p.alt_name, p.comm_num, p.allow_comm, p.fixed, e.news_read, e.allow_rate, e.rating, e.likes, e.dislikes, e.vote_num, e.votes, e.view_edit, e.editdate, e.editor, e.reason 
FROM `dle_post` AS p 
JOIN ( 
    SELECT t2.id 
    FROM `dle_post` AS t2 USE INDEX (cat_posts) 
    	    INNER JOIN `dle_category_map` AS cm ON ( cm.news_id = t2.id AND cm.cat_id=11) 
    WHERE t2.approve=1 AND date < (NOW() + INTERVAL 0 MINUTE) 
    ORDER BY fixed desc, date DESC LIMIT 1536,32 
  ) AS j USING (id) 
LEFT JOIN `dle_post_extras` e ON (p.id=e.news_id)

explain:

| id | select_type | table      | type   | possible_keys | key       | key_len | ref                       | rows | Extra       |
|----|-------------|------------|--------|---------------|-----------|---------|---------------------------|------|-------------|
| 1  | PRIMARY     | <derived2> | ALL    | NULL          | NULL      | NULL    | NULL                      | 1568 | NULL        |
| 1  | PRIMARY     | p          | eq_ref | PRIMARY       | PRIMARY   | 4       | j.id                      | 1    | NULL        |
| 1  | PRIMARY     | e          | ref    | news_id       | news_id   | 4       | j.id                      | 1    | NULL        |
| 2  | DERIVED     | t2         | ref    | cat_posts     | cat_posts | 1       | const                     | 8887 | Using where |
| 2  | DERIVED     | cm         | eq_ref | PRIMARY       | PRIMARY   | 8       | hdvideoscript.t2.id,const | 1    | Using index |

Both return with approximately the same time: But it varies very much from one category to another, and strongly depends on the current page (i.e. the further, the more time the request eats up.)
is ~ 100ms from the end, ~2ms at the beginning.
Maybe there is a third option? Or finish one of these to a sane state.

Answer 1

And isn't the dle_category_map of the table enough to select posts for the desired category and, based on them, make the necessary selection by links?