[CentOS] phpMyAdmin high Memory usage

I installed phpMyAdmin on CentOS 4.4.

When accessing phpMyAdmin the memory usage jumps. Memory usage for http jumps to 700MB spawning 4-5 httpd processes (about 3GB of ram). Mysql also jumps to using close to 600MB in some cases

This is a Daul Dual core Xeon 3GHz machine with 4 GB of 667Mhz ram.

Should I be seeing this spike in Memory usage? The spikes only last about 5 seconds but my manager doesn't want to see those jumps.

The databases appear to be about 450MB-600MB.

On a side note I had a requirement from the dev group here to set php to a maximum memory usage of 1GB due to the large files that are being parsed via a web page.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!