Increased load on server

Hello all,

I am having a strange problem where my database server load average increase as the number of updates and selects on 3 of my larges tables go up. The biggest ones (160GB) are MyISAM tables and the third is an innodb table (2GB).

The server is my master database so it gets a lot of updates but because the large tables are so big, I have to do selects on them from the master because if I did my selects on the slave it will increase their replication lag. I am considering moving to innodb but I want to make sure I have tried all options before I make that move because the tables are soo large. Has anyone had this problem before and maybe have any ideas how to solve it?

I also noticed that the more the number of active connections I have, the cpu system waits go up when there is a lot of activity on these tables.

An help would be welcomed. my mysql config is show below.
[mysqld]
log-bin
replicate-ignore-db=mysql

log-slave-updates

server-id = 52001001
set-variable = max_connections=2500
set-variable = back_log=20
set-variable = key_buffer=8000M
set-variable = table_cache=4000
set-variable = max_allowed_packet=4M
set-variable = sort_buffer=2M
set-variable = record_buffer=4M
set-variable = myisam_sort_buffer_size=64M
set-variable = thread_cache=200
set-variable = long_query_time=10
set-variable = query_cache_size=256M
set_variable = wait_timeout=60

transaction-isolation = READ-COMMITTED
skip-slave-start

innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=20M

innodb_flush_method=O_DIRECT

innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=2

innodb_log_buffer_size=256M

innodb_buffer_pool_size=2G

Have eight threads running concurrently

innodb_thread_concurrency=8

let’s have a file per table

innodb_file_per_table

############################################################ ############

log-bin = /var/lib/mysql/b2db01-new-bin

relay-log = /var/lib/mysql/b2db09-relay-bin

log-slow-queries = /var/lib/mysql/slow.log
skip-name-resolve
tmpdir = /var/lib/mysql/tmp

#core-file

datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock

Default to using old password format for compatibility with mysql 3.x

clients (those using the mysqlclient10 compatibility package).

old_passwords=1
#user=root

[mysql.server]
user=mysql
#core_file_size = unlimited

[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
log=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid

[client]
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
#user = root

Why is it strange that your load increases if you ask your server to do more for you?
If a query takes a long time on a MyISAM table, then all update/insert queries have to wait. Check [URL=“MySQL :: MySQL 8.0 Reference Manual :: 13.7.7.29 SHOW PROCESSLIST Statement”] http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/show-processlist.html[/URL]