Help speeding up loading data

[Nikidala]

I am trying to load / grab / select around 200,000 records from a table via PHP at it is taking on average 8 seconds. I am relatively sure that it is the actually run / load time rather than just a slow connection between me and the server because I was outputting the microtime before and after the loading.

I was also running it at the slowest time for my server (slowest meaning not being hit very often). I have tried with and without indexes on the id field, and that made very little impact, so it made me think even more that it was a PHP issue (rather than a database one). Also, I rebooted the server during testing to see if that would help (hey, it works on Windows machines, so why not try)...

I really need to get this down, but can't figure out how to optimize it any more than I already have.

Server Details:
PHP 4.2.2
MySQL 3.23.54

Table Details:
spell_langid = smallint (index)
hash = int
flags = int

Total rows size = 17 bytes
# rows = 268,449
# rows wanted = ~200,000

PHP:

PHP Code:


            $words=$DB_site->query("SELECT hash, flags
                                    FROM spell_hash
                                    WHERE spell_langid = $lang_id");

            while (list($hash, $flags) = $DB_site->fetch_array($words)) {
                $this->hashes["$hash"] = $flags;
            } 


I have already tried it via files, but the database was quicker than files... Anybody have any ideas? Anybody loading this amount of data at the same time?


Thanks!
Nikki