eAccelerator - does it really work?

This article made me take the decision to try out the eAccelerator on my forum. The forum is hosted on a second-hand server, entirely dedicated to it. I have met some difficulties with it recently, because the hard drive is kinda old and isn't as fit as I'd like. It makes server loads around 50-80 and up. I'll try to install the accelerator as I write this post.
My server has an Intel celeron CPU, running at 500 MHz, with 128 MB SDram and an 8.4 GB hard drive, running debian etch. Currently it takes around 0.5 seconds to load a page with 8-10 mysql queries. The script for the forum is simple machines running the latest version so far (1.1.2), I've chose it because it's lightweight and has comments written all over the code, so it's way much simpler to modify something, then it was in phpBB. So here's the test:
Following this tutorial (yes, I know, I'm a geek because I read linux tutorials)
Looking through google on how to untar .tar.bz2 archives.. found the command tar --bzip -xf filename.tar.bz2 and initially it didn't work. I thought of trying aptitude install bzip2 and it worked! Okay, untar-ed the file, continuing the tutorial...

debian:~/eaccelerator-0.9.5# export PHP_PREFIX="/usr"
debian:~/eaccelerator-0.9.5# $PHP_PREFIX/bin/phpize
-bash: /usr/bin/phpize: No such file or directory

yeah, such a tutorial...

debian:~/eaccelerator-0.9.5# ./configure --enable-eaccelerator=shared --with-php-config=$PHP_PREFIX/bin/php-config
-bash: ./configure: No such file or directory

WTF?!?
Trying this:
http://tag.csdn.net/Article/86766964-179d-4d99-8d93-d85db3645a80.html
Didn't work.
What kind of a package WON'T RUN ON DEBIAN?!?
Giving up. Will try another caching engine.