Wood v Iron Planes.

People who have had plenty of experience with both wood and iron planes, can the wood planes perform as good as the iron planes? I had bit of a dissapointing run with my wood planes on some. knotty old Oregon this weekend and when I tried my iron plane on the same wood it was a huge difference smoother with a much cleaner cut handiloing the knots much better. Wood plane was a typical mathesion jack plane the iron plane a standard Stanley #5. Blades sharpened the same way wood plane recently had its sole flattened.