Optimal server setting for D7, list?

ok, as I have been playing more and more with the latest RC's, I've noticed sometimes my site is running incredibly slow.  I know there is a list of hosting providers who specialize in Dolphin hosting, but for those of us who do our own hosting (VPS or dedicated box), is there a list of certain things we can do to increase performance and speed of the script?

Point is, if I have a lightning fast server, and a reliable host with outstanding upstream connections, what else can I do to improve my sites overall performance?

There's got to be a twek list or something somewhere?

Thanks,

Bill

This would fall under the auspices of MySql and Php performance. So start your reading there. One thing you can do quickly is enable gzip_compression in PHP. MySql tweaks are more of a "black art" but if you have tons of ram etc you can try just using the config ini for BIG server. But all you are really doing is setting up for lots of users simultaneously, most tweaks won't benefit a single user. 

Dolphin runs a ton of Javascript, which is run on the client side, but the browser's interpretation of this code can itself introduce inefficiencies and the performance of different constructs varies from client to client.

Sydeburnz

Most critical things to improve performance of Dolphin 7:

1) enable files compression in server (like Sydeburnz already said), it reduces the size of every file web server outputs, especially it gradually reduces the size of js and css files ! how to enable it you can read here:

http://www.boonex.com/unity/forums/topic/How-to-reduce-load-time-of-dolphin-7.htm

2) install some PHP accelerator, pre-compiler and dynamic content cache. Some of them are zend optimizer and eAccelerator

3) Optimize MySQL server settings to tune up the cache for your server size and RAM available. Some of default MySQL setting have some important caches disabled at all !!!

Of cause there are a lot of other options to tune up the performance, but above ones are most critical I think.

The best way to enable above tweaks for your site is to consult with your hosting.

Thanks very much guys, I am going to get to reading and optimizing!