Server Load Issue

I'm having a slight server load issue ever since putting up a new front page to my site which includes a number of the "such and such on non-vb page" type of hacks.

For quite a while, I had my forums section and my homepage mostly seperate, but my latest homepage redesign calls several things from the forums database. You can see it at:

http://newbeetle.org

Prior to this redesign, my server (RedHat 7.0, PIII 800MHz, 256MB, vB 2.0.3) ran very consistently at under 1.0 load. The vBulletin on the site is pretty moderate in traffic. It's got about 2200 registered users, and anywhere from 15-50 online at a time.

Ever since this latest homepage update, the load run more regularly in the .50 to 1.5 range, which I'm ok with. However, it spikes once an hour or so to the 4.0-5.0 range, and a couple of times it's gone as high as 25! When it's spiked, if I restart Apache, the load drops right back down.

Each of the little non-vb page hacks I had included were making their own connection to the database, so I corrected that by commenting out all the DB connections, except for the first one. That seems to have helped quite a bit, but I'm still getting the fairly regular (once an hour or so) spikes to the 5.0 range.

The BB traffic hasn't changed at all. The only real change is the new front page design. I have noticed that the load spikes don't really correlate to the numbers of users on the vB at any given time. It can spike in the middle of the night, when there is almost no one on, as well as at peak times.

Anyone have any clues for me? I have purchased more RAM and will be installing it soon. Do you think this will help? Any help at all would be wonderful! Thanks so much!