if the content is cacheable, using varnish or nginx-cache will definetely reduce load.

we have a similar setup (nginx infront of apache+php) with an average of 5000 requests/second,
and using nginx-cache with a cache-time of 1 minute reduced load from around 8 to
0.5 on the apache-servers, while the nginx-servers are still idleing at around 0.2

we use to nginx to cache static content as well as dynamic pages






regards,


mex