Sluggish performance w/ RH 7.3
 

I've got a dual Xeon (2.6 mHz) system, and I mainly want to use it for SoftImage XSI (3d modeling/animation). Red Hat seems preposterously slow when running XSI. I loaded Red Hat 9, but then found out that XSI uses the older gLibc and won't run except on 7.3 and 8.0.
Does anyone know of ways to ramp up my processing? This thing is so bad it makes Windows look fast; in fact, the same renders took 50% longer on a dual processor Xeon/Red Hat 7.3 o/s than it did on a Single P4-3.06mHz processor/XP Pro system.
I really need some help here. Who's a speed freak that can hang on to stability?
Seriously Slow Scott