high traffic mysql hosts I'm wondering if any of you sql buffs out there have any suggestions for a high speed mySQL server. I need something that can handle roughly 33 updates and 33 queries per second, per user.

and for now I really only need to handle say, 10 users.

I know it's hard to say because it depends on the statements so maybe if I supply them it will be of help.

each user is calling :

33x per second 

SELECT Online, Xloc, Yloc FROM accounts WHERE AccountID = " + getlocI 


and polling:

33x per second

UPDATE `accounts` SET `Online`='"+InitialStat.Onlineint+"', `Xloc`='"+Game.currentx+"',
`Yloc`='"+Game.currenty+"' WHERE (`AccountID`='"+UserVerify.clientID+"') LIMIT 1   


with a larger UPDATE only once per minute:

UPDATE `accounts` SET `Online`='"+InitialStat.Onlineint+"',`Zone`='"+Game.currentzone+"',`Xloc`='"+Game.currentx+"', `Yloc`='"+Game.currenty+"', `Level`='"+InitialStat.PlayerLevel+""
                        + "', `XP`='"+InitialStat.XP+"', `Health`='"+InitialStat.health+"', `Magic`='"+InitialStat.magic+"', `Stamina`='"+InitialStat.stamina+""
                        + "', `Strength`='"+InitialStat.strength+"', `Defense`='"+InitialStat.defense+"', `Vitality`='"+InitialStat.vitality+""
                        + "', `Agility`='"+InitialStat.agility+"', `Intelligence`='"+InitialStat.intelligence+"', `Dexterity`='"+InitialStat.dexterity+""
                        + "', `Luck`='"+InitialStat.luck+"', `Gold`='"+InitialStat.gold+"' WHERE (`AccountID`='"+UserVerify.clientID+"') LIMIT 1  


the larger UPDATE statement isn't too big of a deal since it happens far less frequently.

But the fastest I can get my other ones to go is somewhere around once per second.

Is there any way I can find out a ballpark of what I would need in a server to get those to function as fast as I'd like them to? I'm currently using a VH, I'd rather not go the dedicated server route yet because this is still in development, so spending a few hundred a month of the server is a bit much.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If you need more info please let me know.
While MySQL is in-memory database (tables you are querying should be in memory to get quite nice performance) so you have to have enough of RAM to hold accounts table in buffer pool (innodb_buffer_pool_size). Can you calculate the size of your table (query information_schema.tables for this information)? For example, if it's 10G and you can get 10G at least (it would be nice to have at least +20-30%) so you can go with virtual server. If you cant afford 10G RAM (for example you need 700G RAM) you should think about sharding (moving data to different servers by accountId).

It's a good option to use partition by accountId it will reduce amount of blocking inserts/updates.

MySQL 5.5/5.6 has a nice feature to load/dump buffer_pool to you do need to do warm up after each server restart (look at innodb_buffer_pool_load_at_startup, innodb_buffer_pool_dump_at_shutdown).

That is where I would start. General advice: change settings in my.cnf and benchmark them.

Hope it helps