I meant in terms of row size...The server is not stressed in any way, cpu and memory are fine. The CF DB is ~420MB and is fully indexed so no problems them.
there is over a half million posts, does this meant that the threads table has a half million rows in it.
if you actually log into the server use SQL query and type a simple query how long does it actually take to return this data? and what about more complex queries?
fair enough the site may be fully indexed, but does that actually help in this siteuation, (http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2006/06/09/why-mysql-could-be-slow-with-large-tables/)
and what of the databases for other sites that are always on as well.
how many rows do all these other sites take up?
and what of the free forums that are also hosted on the same server?
you're running handfuls of sites of a server that just doesn't seem up to the job,
alternatively,
what's the traffic like coming to the sites? (as in all the sites running on the same server, not just this site).
whats the Apache configuration like, like how many active connections can you process, what's the keep alive time, what's Maxclients set to, is this too low for the amount of traffic that you receive?
The point is that there is something wrong somewhere and ideally it does need to be fixed.
just hopping to a new server isn't really going to help I doubt, but you do need to look at what is going on with these things. consider more possibilities...
TBH I doubt that it's the new forum software that's causing these troubles