The question isn't whether the boards are slower or not; they are definitely slow around noon in the US. I get a faster connection in the evenings on my home 56K modem than at work at noon on the T1.
Since it would seem to be a server issue, the question really is, what can be done to help the boards handle peak volume? Is it more memory? More bandwidth? I'm not nearly qualified to make any judgements on that issue.
As to it being due to the new registrations, does registration take THAT much resources? I'm guessing that (from looking at the number of registered members) that maybe 500 people have registered in the last week. Assuming that ALL of them register in the 3 busiest hours of the day, over the course of 7 days thats about 4 people every ten minutes. I can't imagine that would really create that much of a spike. Then again, I know little about these issues.
I'd just like to see if this is something that can be addressed, or if we just have to live with timed out connections at lunchtime from now on.