Apache V Nginx - Static File Results

I used ab (ab -c50 -t5s) to benchmark Apache V Nginx for a static file on the same server.

Apache becomes CPU bound at 200 requests per second and Nginx is at about 25% CPU while handline 5211 requests per second.

No swapping took place with Apache, lack of memory wasn't an issue.

I know there are a myriad of different configurations for both Nginx and Apache, but how far behind Apache is Nginx is just ridiculous.

So ridiculous in fact that I think I've missed something with Apache.

Any ideas where to start?

Here are the ab results:

Server Software:        nginx  
Server Port:            80  

Document Path:          /images/15.jpg  
Document Length:        15088 bytes  

Concurrency Level:      50  
Time taken for tests:   5.494 seconds  
Complete requests:      26059  
Failed requests:        0  
Write errors:           0  
Total transferred:      400370476 bytes  
HTML transferred:       393178192 bytes  
Requests per second:    5211.29 [#/sec] (mean)  
Time per request:       9.595 [ms] (mean)  
Time per request:       0.192 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)  
Transfer rate:          78189.48 [Kbytes/sec] received  

Connection Times (ms)  
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max  
Connect:        0    4   0.6      4      10  
Processing:     3    5   0.8      5      13  
Waiting:        0    2   1.3      2      10  
Total:          6    9   0.9      9      19  

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)  
  50%      9  
  66%      9  
  75%      9  
  80%      9  
  90%     10  
  95%     10  
  98%     11  
  99%     12  
 100%     19 (longest request)  


Server Software:        Apache  
Server Port:            81  

Document Path:          /images/15.jpg  
Document Length:        15088 bytes  

Concurrency Level:      50  
Time taken for tests:   5.31551 seconds  
Complete requests:      1008  
Failed requests:        0  
Write errors:           0  
Total transferred:      15681815 bytes  
HTML transferred:       15433585 bytes  
Requests per second:    200.34 [#/sec] (mean)  
Time per request:       249.581 [ms] (mean)  
Time per request:       4.992 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)  
Transfer rate:          3043.59 [Kbytes/sec] received  

Connection Times (ms)  
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max  
Connect:        2   84  47.5     78     222  
Processing:    24  158  46.5    162     260  
Waiting:        1   96  45.1     91     221  
Total:        187  242  48.5    232     428  

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)  
  50%    232  
  66%    238  
  75%    246  
  80%    249  
  90%    304  
  95%    380  
  98%    409  
  99%    423  
 100%    428 (longest request)