change to httpd.conf - no result

I changed my .htaccess files (2) from root and vbulletin root into one httpd.conf.
Then I rebooted the apache and renamed to .htaccess-xxx.
But as I see, there is absolutely ZERO result in performance.
Google (webmaster tools) shows absolutely no benefit.

Why? Everbody is talking about the great experience with that ...

It is not something you will immediately notice. You can see the difference when your board is busy.

Is there anything, that can be done wrong with that?
I had one minute with a 404 because of renaming a .htaccess file which wasn't completely transferred within httpd.conf.
After doing that, everything was okay.
So, I have to believe, that it is okay.
Renaming shouldn't be the problem, right?
It doesn't look for something starting (!) with .htaccess right?

Thanks!

Only Apache use the .htaccess file, if you moved it to httpd.conf is should be same.

You can still use htaccess if you want to add additional rules for a directory/path.

As long as you have the AllowOverride directive on, an htaccess file will 'override' that of the httpd.conf setting.

I renamed the files to .htaccess-xxx.
Is override just for .htaccess itself, right? (And not for names with an added string)

Correct, ONLY .htaccess exactly.

Thanks.
So I still haven't got any idea, why my performance isn't better.

The performance gain from this move is very minimal. It will only likely be noticed on a traffic spike (ie, you made the front page of digg)