I just purchased a couple of sites which I put on my server and now my server load in very high. Sometimes around 25 and it is slowing down everything. I only have 5 sites using bandwidth, so how is these 3 sites killing my server? How do I check which site is using it all?
How to check which sites are using all the bandwidth varies with which hosting control panel are you using. What type of sites are these and how active are they?
Turn all three off. Or put a parking page up. Turn one back on at a time while you are watching the stats.
Can you post the result of top and top -c Perform this step when all your websites are running i.e. you haven't pulled anyone down. It could be better if these are provided at the times when the load is at peak.
Make sure Apache and Mysql are both optimized. If you want to lower the resource usage, I'd suggest changing control panels.
I don't think the footprint of cPanel is going to cause the guy to be using 40% swap. Sounds like the server has a lot of requests and apache is using all the ram as a result it starts using the swap heavily along with the ram. Thus you get huge amounts of i/o strain on the box. But more information would be needed like a top output and things of that nature.
I have 2GB of ram now. Should I add another 1GB of ram or setup one of the main sites on another hosting plan?
More ram, the better. But if you don't find the true cause of the problem, you'll be wasting your money and time.. Try top -c and show us your apache and mysql config files.
can you post the top like inworx said, try lowering some values like time outs & execution limits then restart apache.
Seems you aren't familiar with SSH.... This is clearly shown your swap is being utilized. It isn't a good idea to use SWAP instead of RAM. You RAM isn't enough. Change Control Panels if possible, cpanel itself uses much part of your free memory. Last, show us your top stats