I am fairly new to web hosting.  I have been to a few different places to find a reliable host and finally found ServInt.  Then lately I started to notice how slow the pages would render.  My pages aren't super MySQL intensive or bandwidth intensive so it made no sense to me.  Then I noticed, it was awstats!

Those of you who have web hosting and often wonder why your box has load averages close to 10 or mid 10s, look no further.  Your culprit could very well be awstats.  The bigger the log files, the more time it takes for awstats to update.  Avoid updating site stats during the day.

My recommendation is to login to WHM and go to "Statistics Software Configuration" and modify the frequency and times.  Even if it says "The server currently is able to keep up with your statistics processing schedule.", ignore that and change it anyway.  I set mine to every 24hrs to run from 1am to 6am ONLY.  If you don't know what WHM is or cpanel, then contact your admin and ask when the site stats update.