Usage

To check if you have the proper amount of RAM and number of cores, run top(1):

load averages:  0.61,  0.48,  0.41        01:49:33
217 processes: 216 idle, 1 on processorup 137 days,  3:21
CPU0:  6.4% user,  0.0% nice, 19.5% sys,  6.9% spin,  1.0% intr, 66.3% idle
CPU1:  6.5% user,  0.0% nice, 18.9% sys,  7.1% spin,  0.0% intr, 67.5% idle
Memory: Real: 1023M/1775M act/tot Free: 189M Cache: 392M Swap: 993M/2288M

on the first line we see average load, hostname and date on the next line we see number of process and uptime. and next we see details of each cpu core being used by system.

Faster status updates

top might look too slow, to make it refresh faster pass the -s argument to it

$ top -s 2

This will make top refresh each two seconds, on very busy systems very low values might make matters worse. by default top will refresh every 5 seconds.