Somehow missed this thread earlier, but I also agree with the responses so far. Very likely that apache is burning up CPU trying to (inefficiently) serve static assets. An nginx reverse-proxy is probably the cheapest option. (memcached / varnish for caching might help too but nginx's event-driven static content server is the big one)
I searched for some docs on setting up nginx as a reverse proxy for apache and came across this:
Using Nginx as a reverse caching proxy for Wordpress: results (Overview)
Using Nginx as a reverse caching proxy for Wordpress: the setup (Configuration details)
The nginx config file
(H/T http://bostinno.streetwise.co/channels/n...wordpress/)
I searched for some docs on setting up nginx as a reverse proxy for apache and came across this:
Using Nginx as a reverse caching proxy for Wordpress: results (Overview)
Using Nginx as a reverse caching proxy for Wordpress: the setup (Configuration details)
The nginx config file
(H/T http://bostinno.streetwise.co/channels/n...wordpress/)