Mysql makes my site load very slow
I cant seem to find what the problem is. 
My homepage takes 5s to load and i suspected highly its because of mysql. when i type my site url in the browser, i have to wait 5s only then it will load.

I have dedicated server running intel celeron, centos with 1GB RAM. My database is approx 650mb in size with 200k records and i have index created for date,id etc.

Here is my sql query used in the homepage:

    selectid`,`title`,`desc`,`contribution`,`date`,`sponsored`				
    from tbl_releases where date <= CURRENT_DATE()  AND approved='1' 
    order by `date` desc,`sponsored` desc,`con` desc,`id` desc
    limit 100

i tried every everything like 

1. optimizing using my.cnf with buffer etc but its not improving the site performance.
2. optimizing table.

P.S: does database size have impact on performance. i have over 50% junk in database and does deleting useless rows help improve the performance. 
Mysql makes my site load very slow
===

I cant seem to find what the problem is. 
My homepage takes 5s to load and i suspected highly its because of mysql. when i type my site url in the browser, i have to wait 5s only then it will load.

I have dedicated server running intel celeron, centos with 1GB RAM. My database is approx 650mb in size with 200k records and i have index created for date,id etc.

Here is my sql query used in the homepage:

    selectid`,`title`,`desc`,`contribution`,`date`,`sponsored`				
    from tbl_releases where date <= CURRENT_DATE()  AND approved='1' 
    order by `date` desc,`sponsored` desc,`con` desc,`id` desc
    limit 100

i tried every everything like 

1. optimizing using my.cnf with buffer etc but its not improving the site performance.
2. optimizing table.

P.S: does database size have impact on performance. i have over 50% junk in database and does deleting useless rows help improve the performance. 