Is the original poster on a shared server? That high server load is probably not even his fault. It's probably someone else on the server doing it.

I have a 3.2 pentium server with 2 gigs of ram, 3 thousand+ visiters to my forum daily and the server load rarely goes above 2. I also have dozens of mods installed.

The only thing that caused a problem was the new IBproarcade hack that crashes my server every five minutes. I've de-activated it until the hack author fixes the glitch.

Here is a dumb question I am sure:

But how/where do you check server loads?

No, most versions of top are not taking into account multiple processors. For every real core a load of 1+(cores) is accectable.

1 processor 1 core load of 1 is ok
2 processors 1 core each load of 2 is ok
4 processors 2 cores each load of 8 is accectable.

If you have SSH access than type ' top ' into the command prompt. On some versions of cpanel you can look on the bottom left and click the option for service status.

it aitn that bad - well it is because the load is really high - but who`s to say that her board is causing that?

She may be on a shared host and others are doing it or the host is experiecning problems with the actual server.
It can be a combination of lots of things.Best thing to do is monitor it and if u get loads at 15 all the time then you got problems but if it mellows out after a while and drops back down to say below 2 then you fine.

yeah, i'm on a shared server. i'm not getting 10's and 15's anymore, it's back down-the highest it goes now is 4 or so. i guess i'm not going to worry about it unless my host contacts me-i already tweaked the vbshout and pager settings, the only other thing i could do would be to disable them, and i don't want to do that unless i have to.

1. Server
=======
Server Load Averages 13.67 12.36 7.84 | 348 Users Online (268 members and 80 guests)

2. Server
=======
Server Load Averages 0.15 0.19 0.17 | 1 Users Online (1 members and 0 guests)
1 Member :p me

Atkan Server 1 must be slow....

Mine is [Server Loads: 5.09 4.08 : 4.28]
9 users online: 4 Guests, 1 Anonymous, 4 Visible

Anything over 1.50% makes my server slow down :(
As of late my server has been over 4's 5's and even 7's with hardly anyone online, I have been onto my host and threatened them with leaving and getting a 30 day money back....

I am on a Semi Dedicated server and i didnt expect a service like this...

Iam therefore looking for a new Virtual Dedicated Server at no more than say ?50 pm for around 20gb hdd..... Although i know nothing about linux but i need to do somthing as i have been kicked off shared hosting.....

Anyone got any ideas for me please, also Paypal is preferred :)

i was sending mail just now Look at again

Thats a little better ;)
Mines like that with no users :(