High performance squid proxy configuration help

I need some assistance configuring squid for a very high load. OS: CentOS 5.5 Hardware specs: Dual Xeon 2.80GHz, 2GB, 74GB (10k RPM) Squid version: 3.1.0.15 100mbit File descriptors: 4096 Snapshot of load average: 8.39, 7.23, 7.38 I do not think I need any caching as squid is simply setup to be an anonymous proxy server. I've turned off caching and logging but it still hasn't improved anything at all. Should I keep it enabled? access_log none cache deny all cache_store_log none It appears the server is having some problem handling the high load of requests because I notice that I get random http errors when the load is high (like 502 bad gateway). It is very random, but affecting users as the quality of service has gone down. I am wondering, do I need to config squid in a certain way or is my hardware simply not capable of being a proxy server for this many requests (avg about 1500 per minute). I just want to make sure that I don't upgrade hardware because of poor software configuration.