Slow loading in admin/categories

[whiteracing]

I have over 700,00 products in our database now, have upgraded to a server
Operation System: CentOS
Processor: Nehalem Xeon 5520 2.26 GHz
Cache: 8 MB Smart Cache
cPanel w/ Fantastico:
Managed: more...
RAM: 12 GB DDR3
HDD: 1 TB
Traffic: 10 TB
Uplink/Speed: 100 mbps

The home page and such is quick, but when i access admin/categories.php my lord it's painfully slow of upto 3 minutes.

An SQL query we made:

Executed 1 min ago for 29 sec on Database --> unknown.
select distinct p.products_id, p.products_image, p.products_tax_class_id, pd.products_name, p.products_date_added, p.products_price, p.products_type, p.master_categories_id from products p, products_description pd where p.products_id = pd.products_id and pd.language_id = '1' and p.products_status = 1 and p.products_date_added >=20111228
Executed 0 min ago for 17 sec on Database --> whiterac_zc.
select distinct p.products_id, p.products_image, p.products_tax_class_id, pd.products_name, p.products_date_added, p.products_price, p.products_type, p.master_categories_id from products p, products_description pd where p.products_id = pd.products_id and pd.language_id = '1' and p.products_status = 1 and p.products_date_added >=20111228

Any ideas and is 700,000 + products in our database a more than zencart can handle?

[DrByte]

Have you considered these?
https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=21
https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/i...hp?article=287 -- many of these require high level access to server configs, and are largely intended for the server admin to handle due to their expertise in such matters