Does running WordPress on Nginx do “squat” for its performance?

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This article states:

If you aren’t already using a PHP opcode cache and WordPress caching
plugin, nginx will do squat for your WordPress-based website’s
performance.

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Could someone elaborate on what the author means. I’m currently running a vanilla install of wordpress on my Apache2 webserver. I’m considering migrating a number of my other sites (non-wordpress) to Nginx and think whilst I’m at it I might as well migrate WordPress too. But the above statement makes me think that there’ll be no benefit to migrating wordpress. Why?

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  1. “squat” is synonymous with “nothing” in this case. So, I’d say:

    Before you consider using nginx, be aware that PHP APC or a similar
    opcode cache with a WordPress caching plugin is going to offer
    significant performance improvements over just switching from Apache
    to nginx.

    If you aren’t already using a PHP opcode cache and WordPress
    caching plugin, nginx will do nothing for your WordPress-based
    website’s performance.

    The way I understand it, these points talk about premature optimization. It says, don’t just move WordPress installation from Apache to Nginx just because everyone says Nginx is a better performant web server than Apache (although it’s probably true).

    Try optimizing Apache first, enable opcode caching, try application accelerator like Varnish, etc. Doing so, the setup can offer significant performance improvements over just switching to Nginx.

    If it still doesn’t satisfy you (i.e. if the gained performance is still not acceptable), that’s when you should actually consider moving your WordPress installation to Nginx — especially because WordPress has limited support for nginx-based setups as of now.

    WordPress is intertwined with the Apache world so support for
    nginx-based setups is limited but growing. Factor these things into
    your decision to use nginx.