I am planning on looking at the raid controller here soon. I have to bring the box down to do this so I will have to wait till early tomorrow morning. ugh... or maybe even this weekend... double ugh... *sigh*

wendel@develop ~
$ vmstat 5 10
   procs                      memory      swap          io     system 
+     cpu
 r  b  w   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs 
+us sy id
 0  0  0 201948  51692 202216 452744    0    0     2     0    2     1 
+ 1  1  1
 0  0  0 201948  51692 202228 452744    0    0     0    10  149   196 
+ 1  0 98
 0  0  0 201948  51692 202228 452744    0    0     0     0  132   182 
+ 1  0 99
 0  0  0 201948  51692 202228 452744    0    0     0     0  110   136 
+ 0  1 98
 0  0  0 201948  51692 202232 452744    0    0     0    29  108   113 
+ 1  2 98
 0  0  0 201948  51692 202232 452744    0    0     0    42  111   112 
+ 0  0 99
 0  0  0 201948  51692 202232 452744    0    0     0     0  109   135 
+ 0  0 100
 0  0  0 201948  51692 202232 452744    0    0     0     0  107   130 
+ 1  0 99
 0  0  0 201948  51692 202232 452744    0    0     0     0  110   136 
+ 1  1 99
 0  0  0 201948  51692 202232 452744    0    0     0     0  116   156 
+ 1  0 99
wendel@develop ~
$ vmstat 5 10
   procs                      memory      swap          io     system 
+     cpu
 r  b  w   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs 
+us sy id
 1  0  0 201936  92416 202284 452744    0    0     2     0    2     1 
+ 1  1  1
 1  0  0 201936  83428 202296 452744    0    0     0    41  107   128 
+19  1 80
 0  0  0 201936  73672 202304 452744    0    0     0    50  106   121 
+22  1 77
 1  0  0 201936  78388 202312 452744    1    0     1    38  105   121 
+17  2 81
 1  0  0 201936  81252 202324 452744    0    0     0    42  109   133 
+19  1 80
 1  0  0 201936  84052 202328 452748    2    0     3    42  158   144 
+22  2 76
 1  0  0 201936  74168 202336 452748    1    0     1    73  141   161 
+21  3 76
 0  0  0 201936  63516 202348 452748    2    0     2    80  117   155 
+24  1 75
 0  0  0 201936  63516 202356 452748    0    0     0    42  111   138 
+ 0  1 99
 0  0  0 201936  63516 202356 452748    0    0     0     0  130   185 
+ 0  0 99
[download]

It seems as if the only big difference would be the number of blocks read in from disk. hrm... Raid controller... How did you move away from using the Raid controller? Did you get a different box? Disable it?