Lighttpd - 95% Cpu Usage. Apache - All Ram Used, Swap Comes In

I've hired *name* to take care of my server, but it's just getting so frustrating, as it seems they can't fix my server/optimize it correctly.

I just want some input as to what the problem is here.

I got them to install lighttpd along with xcache.

After about 15-18 hours, the server's CPU slowly increases to be using 90-90%, giving me the 500 Internal Server Error.

I've asked them to optimize xcache and lighttpd, but I keep getting these responses:

Quote:

The should be pretty optimized. Xcache has limited optimization features.

Quote:

Lighttpd itself is pretty optimized, the problem is php. Php runs as its own binary and theres not many parameters that can be tweaked.

Is that even correct?

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So I got them to enable apache, and disable lighttpd.

This time, it's the other way around.

My ram get's completely used up, forcing the server to use Swap; making the load shoot to 50+. CPU usage is fine the entire way.

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This has been going back and forth, enabling/disabling lighttpd and re-enabling apache but a problem always comes up each time.

Am I asking for too much?

Server specs;
Intel C2D E6400
4GB Ram

There is only one IPB board on this server - nothing else.

Average users is 70-200 users within 15 minutes.

This is what I'm getting when lighttpd is on:

Code:
top - 22:56:02 up 18:46, 1 user, load average: 23.38, 22.84, 22.44
Tasks: 117 total, 17 running, 100 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 95.0%us, 4.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.2%hi, 0.5%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 4147196k total, 1346888k used, 2800308k free, 203144k buffers
Swap: 2907756k total, 0k used, 2907756k free, 712584k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2401 mysql 15 0 318m 107m 3868 S 44 2.6 49:02.02 /usr/libexec/mysqld --defaults-file=/etc/my.cnf --basedir=/usr --datadir=/var/lib
3279 root 15 0 27712 15m 2900 S 12 0.4 10:33.81 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3272 root 16 0 29752 16m 2908 R 11 0.4 10:15.94 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3266 root 15 0 27536 14m 2920 S 11 0.4 10:40.14 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3270 root 16 0 27624 14m 2908 R 11 0.4 10:36.71 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3267 root 16 0 27796 14m 2972 R 10 0.4 10:35.22 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3268 root 15 0 28148 15m 3112 S 10 0.4 10:49.86 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3276 root 16 0 27696 15m 2900 R 10 0.4 10:29.73 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3269 root 16 0 28312 15m 2916 R 10 0.4 10:23.57 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3274 root 16 0 27924 15m 2912 R 10 0.4 10:44.51 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3275 root 16 0 29368 16m 2928 R 9 0.4 10:41.84 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3278 root 15 0 29432 16m 2876 S 9 0.4 10:28.52 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3271 root 16 0 26784 14m 2900 R 9 0.3 10:41.61 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3277 root 16 0 27156 14m 2928 R 9 0.4 10:31.07 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3265 root 15 0 28408 15m 2880 S 8 0.4 10:46.89 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3280 root 16 0 27036 14m 2880 R 8 0.3 10:43.20 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3273 root 15 0 24676 12m 2952 R 8 0.3 10:43.57 /usr/local/lighttpd/bin/php-cgi
3262 root 15 0 13356 11m 632 R 3 0.3 3:04.27 /usr/local/lighttpd/sbin/lighttpd -f /etc/lighttpd.conf
1 root 15 0 2032 648 552 S 0 0.0 0:00.36 init [3]
2 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 [migration/0]
3 root 34 19 0 0 0 R 0 0.0 0:00.00 [ksoftirqd/0]
4 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 [watchdog/0]
5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 [migration/1]
6 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 [ksoftirqd/1]
7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 [watchdog/1]
8 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 [events/0]
9 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 [events/1]
10 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 [khelper]
11 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 [kthread]
15 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 [kblockd/0]
16 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 [kblockd/1]