Comments below. > $ cat /proc/cpuinfo > processor : 0 > vendor_id : GenuineIntel > cpu family : 15 > model : 3 > model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz > stepping : 4 > cpu MHz : 3392.104 > cache size : 1024 KB > fdiv_bug : no > hlt_bug : no > f00f_bug : no > coma_bug : no > fpu : yes > fpu_exception : yes > cpuid level : 5 > wp : yes > flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat > pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe constant_tsc up pni > monitor ds_cpl cid xtpr > bogomips : 6789.41 You -might- want to enable HT (hyper threading) in the machine's BIOS, and test the performance. Some applications get a nice 10-15% boost by enabling Hyper Threading. > > $ cat /proc/meminfo > MemTotal: 3766248 kB > MemFree: 1971752 kB > Buffers: 201272 kB > Cached: 1391400 kB > SwapCached: 0 kB > Active: 502552 kB > Inactive: 1185580 kB > HighTotal: 2883008 kB > HighFree: 1388184 kB > LowTotal: 883240 kB > LowFree: 583568 kB > SwapTotal: 1036152 kB > SwapFree: 1036152 kB > Dirty: 444 kB > Writeback: 0 kB > Mapped: 157152 kB > Slab: 78032 kB > CommitLimit: 2919276 kB > Committed_AS: 370356 kB > PageTables: 3648 kB > VmallocTotal: 114680 kB > VmallocUsed: 13856 kB > VmallocChunk: 100340 kB > HugePages_Total: 0 > HugePages_Free: 0 > HugePages_Rsvd: 0 > Hugepagesize: 4096 kB By the looks of it, your machine is almost idle. What it is used for? Either way, switching to x86_64 should improve the performance somewhat. (x86_64 doesn't require high-memory support - which should reduce the over-head somewhat) > > $ cat /proc/swaps > Filename Type Size Used Priority > /dev/hda8 partition 1036152 0 -1 1GB is more then enough (given the memory usage) - Gilboa