[Samba] samba on nfs server or client

[Venkata]

Hello all. I hope this question is not too dumb, but
I thought I'd ask it anyway since I'd like to get the
opinion of the samba gurus out there. My question is
this:

-- is it better to run smbd and nmbd on a server that
acts as a NFS server and has disks directly attached to it
or is it better to run samba on a seperate machine that
acts as a client to the NFS server?

In other words, in the first scenario, there is no "middleman"
server sitting between the NFS server and the windows client.
Are there any advantages / disadvantages to this approach?
It seems that this would be faster than having a dedicated
samba server that acts as an NFS client since NFS calls are
removed from the picture. Any insight on this is appreciated
as I am purely speculating. Thanks.

--Venkata