wordpress mu image speed problem

I have an mu install with the typical blogs.dir folder storing files for each blog. When loading these images however they take forever to appear, but they eventually do. It seems that wpmu uses php to serve each image which is ludicrous. When using images from the same domain but in a root folder, the images are displayed quickly. Is there a workaround the blogs.php for rend开发者_开发知识库ering files? Could there be something else wrong in the settings of my install?

Hard coding the Rewrite Rule instead of using blogs.php is a temporary workaround with huge speed differences. This can only work if you already know the blog ID's.