What is the fastest way to export a table to a text file
Looping through all those articles is an option if you want to get old watching it execute.

Some different options that you should try are:


the bcp utility (mentioned above, too, it's a command line tool to import and export data to/from an SQL Server);
BULK INSERT statement - the T-SQL language sugar to work with data imports from scripts;
SqlBulkCopy class from .NET - if you want to work from inside the app. A nice example can be seen here: Linchi Shea's Performance Impact: the Most Optimal Insert Script can't Beat BulkCopy .


And you can try all these options while looping in another session, just for fun :-).