Time for dedicated?

[TacticalNuke]

I was on a shared service with ASmallOrange until a few months ago when I switched to WiredTree. Since then we've had some growth and, though I wouldn't attribute it all to growth, our load times have grown to unacceptable levels according to Google at around 2.8 seconds average.

I've done some optimization myself, including:

using memcache
attachments to file system
spiders prevented from many areas
move CSS to file system
changed a number of vB options in the admin CP

I wanted to post my specs here and see if I should continue with optimization or switch to a dedicated and optimize from there. I have no trouble hiring somebody to do the tweaking, but I'm trying to decide if that's the route to take.

We're a somewhat cyclical site but our estimated peak traffic this year will likely be around 65,000 pageviews per day with about 6,500 visits per day. We run vB 3.8.6 and don't have much in the way of files (we don't really allow many attachments). We'll probably be at most 100 GB of data out and 20 in.

We're currently on a WiredTree VPS with 768 of RAM. Our server load generally stays below 1.00 but does peak to 3.50 on occasion for a few seconds. Memory usage always stays below 500 MB. CPU utilization is around 50% with spikes to 80% and 100%. These days we're hitting 250-300 simultaneous TCP connections.

So there's some of the data. Time for a dedicated? Tweak the VPS? Upgrade the VPS and tweak it?

If it is time for a dedicated, what kind of specs should I be aiming for?

Thanks.

[BirdOPrey5]

I'd say your overdue for dedicated... yeah.

As for specs I guess it all depends on if you think you'll continue to grow... as is I think any modest dedicated server you'd find can handle what you've got now. When you find a host see what forums with similar specs are running with them.