[cpncrunch]

Ok, I still think you probably need to spend some money on better hardware, but here are a few ideas for eeking out some more performance from your existing setup:

- Limit the max apache child processes/threads to what your server can easily handle. That way during busy periods people will get an occasional error connecting to your server (or wait a while), but at least mysql won't be thrashing your server so it might improve overall performance during the busy times.

- Figure out which queries are using the most cpu time and optimize those.

- Have a look at your most frequently accessed pages and see if you can optimize database access in those pages.

However if your users are still sometimes getting error messages accessing your site you have to ask yourself whether that is going to hurt your business.