Improving First Byte Time

[jazzitup]

I am currently running a Magento store, along with Wordpress, and a forum software. My Wordpress and forum seem to be performing fine, but my store's first byte time is slow (7.2s!!!!!!) and received an F when testing. I am attempting to do all I can to decrease this and improve my site speed.

I am currently running on a VPS server and have Apache, NGINX, and APC installed. I have tried Apachebooster which did not work with with my forum software, and I also tried Memcached, which seemed to significantly slow down the site.

I was looking into enabling FastCGI, I am using DSO right now, but it looks like it may take significant configuration to work with APC. I also have KeepAlives disabled, my host said it is always recommended to have KeepAlives disabled when running NGINX. Is this true? I am completely new to a VPS and the whole server thing, and all of this is a lot to take in.

I was looking at this previous thread: http://www.webpagetest.org/forums/showth...?tid=10629

Someone mentioned Xcache or eAccelerator. Would either of these significantly improve my first byte time? Or do you have any other suggestions?

Thank you!