Limiting posts per thread for performance reasons?

[Xnaron]

Hi,

Is it necessary to limit the number of posts in a thread for performance reasons? I have been thinking of converting to vBulleting from phpBB but on one of the larger vBulletin boards I am on the moderators are constantly getting people to start a new thread when the post count for a thread reaches over 500 posts. Is this really a limitation of vBulletin? Does performance suffer for threads with really large post counts?

Thanks,
Brendin

[Zachery]

I know on my own board we close threads over 500 (and on other boards 1000 for RP) post topics. Its not so much a limiation of vBulletin rather then the way we do some of the things to get some numbers on that page. Its more of a server thing.

When you need to count every post in that row to get a number to show how many pages, having 5000 pages could be a server killer.

I do it more as preventive measure to ensure that my members wont suffer long loading times for any reason.