What raid size should be "stable"?

[gnode]

I am getting complaints of instability when I have 25+ people in a zone raiding, like for NToV.

At what point do people usually start seeing degradation on raids? According to perfmon, my CPU just hovers around 7-10% most of the day, and spikes to like 13-18% during raids. I have tweak my mysql db to not hit the hd constantly, so my hd read/writes are much lower. The db mostly operates in memory now.

Are there any configuration tips to increase stability for peak conditions like raids? It just does not seem like a hardware problem.

Specs on the server:
P4 2.4ghz
2gb ddr400
7200 rpm hd with eqemu and db on one small partition (quick and easy to defrag), swap and OS on another.
Clean install of Windows XP and on a fresh boot, only 20 processes run. The server does nothing but EQEMU.

Typically the population is 35-50 players. Not everyone attends the raids. When people are spread out the problem does not seem to show itself nearly so much. But when a lot gather for a raid, sometimes the zone will crash.



21 static zones and 15 dynamic.