I have a huge table loading from remote aws ec2 server through php scripts accessing a postgres database.
Currently, there are 2000 rows with 20 columns in the table, taking about 2 min to load after all query optimizations and using multidimensional php arrays to store data for all members through a single query instead of querying the database every now and then for each of the 2000 users.

I was able to reduce the loading time from 5 min to 2 min.

My question is, does the UI also needs to be optimized? Is the traditional table tag outdated? Which is the best way to go about?

Suppose i have all the data ready. If I need to put them out to display instantly, in huge numbers, which is the best way to do it? 

I'm not very well versed with HTML or CSS or even UI testing.