# How to Increase MYSQL performance

**URL:** <https://forums.percona.com/t/how-to-increase-mysql-performance/976>\
**Category:** Other MySQL® Questions\
**Created:** [October 27, 2008, 12:09pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/how-to-increase-mysql-performance/976 "2008-10-27T12:09:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![thehawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a3d4f5/32.png) [@thehawk](https://forums.percona.com/u/thehawk)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2008, 12:09pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/how-to-increase-mysql-performance/976/1 "2008-10-27T12:09:55Z")

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Hello All,

I’m currently running mysql 5 on a server with 6GB of RAM and dual Xeon processors and I wish to take full advantage of the box’s horse power.  
Right now mysql runs fairly slow and it only occupies about 1GB of the total 6GB memory. I wish to increase its utilization so that some queries run faster (in memory).  
Can someone suggest what changes I can make to have mysql utilize more server resources?

(a lot of the queries are Join queries)

I currently have the following lines in my.cfg file:  
[mysqld]  
key\_buffer\_size=256M  
query\_cache\_limit=32M  
query\_cache\_size=256M  
thread\_cache\_size=256M  
join\_buffer=64M  
max\_allowed\_packet=16M  
table\_cache=2048  
sort\_buffer\_size=16M  
read\_buffer\_size=4M  
myisam\_sort\_buffer\_size =64M

[isamchk]  
key\_buffer=128M  
sort\_buffer=128M  
read\_buffer=32M  
write\_buffer=32M

[myisamchk]  
key\_buffer=128M  
sort\_buffer=128M  
read\_buffer=32M  
write\_buffer=32M

Anything I can tweak better?  
Thanks  
TheHawk

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![debug](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forums.percona.com/debug/32/772_2.png) [@debug](https://forums.percona.com/u/debug)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 12:30am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/how-to-increase-mysql-performance/976/2 "2008-10-28T00:30:46Z")

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What storage engine do you mostly use? MyISAM or InnoDB?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![thehawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a3d4f5/32.png) [@thehawk](https://forums.percona.com/u/thehawk)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 2:41pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/how-to-increase-mysql-performance/976/3 "2008-10-28T14:41:39Z")

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I’m not sure as I’m a newbie. How can I check?  
Thanks