Yes, that's because cornerRadius and clipToBounds requires offscreen rendering, I suggest you to read these answer from one of my question. I also quote two WWDC session thatyou should see.
The best thing you can do is grab the image right after is downloaded and on another thread dispatch a method that round the images. Is preferable that you work on the image instead of the imageview.
// Get your image somehow
UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"image.jpg"];
// Begin a new image that will be the new image with the rounded corners
// (here with the size of an UIImageView)
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(imageView.bounds.size, NO, 1.0);
// Add a clip before drawing anything, in the shape of an rounded rect
[[UIBezierPath bezierPathWithRoundedRect:imageView.bounds
cornerRadius:10.0] addClip];
// Draw your image
[image drawInRect:imageView.bounds];
// Get the image, here setting the UIImageView image
imageView.image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
// Lets forget about that we were drawing
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
Method grabbed here
You can also subclass the tableviewcell and override the drawRect method.
The dirty but very effective way is draw a mask in photoshop with inside alpha and around the matching color of the background of the cell and add another imageView, not opaque with clear background color, on the one with images.