What are the best tools to test why Mac Pro is so slow?

Hi,
I have a 2 x 2.4 GHz quad core intel xeon with 6 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 RAM. 2 x 1 TB Western Digital disks (WDC WD1001FALS-41Y6A1 (boot disk- 50% disk free) and WDC WD1002FAEX-00Y9A0).
I am often surprised at how slow the machine works. Especially when coming out of sleep mode, where the machine could take minutes just to show the login prompt.
Yes, I do keep more than a few processes running all the time, but am I expecting too much? After all it's got some reasonable horsepower. When I check task manager its usually the Chrome renderers that are hogging up a core (or two) but there are still many cores left (at least according to istat menus).
Anyway, I'm wondering what are the right tools to diagnosing the situation and how to improve it.
I've started off with disk utility and everything seems fine.
Can someone please recommend my next steps?   Are there any freeware utilities?
thanks
moosya

Use this article to examine your Memory. You can take a screen shot (Command-Shft-4 and drag across the area to be captured) and post it using the little camera icon on the top of the reply window on the forums. Or answer these questions:
How much total RAM.
How much of the pie chart is Green?
How much is Green + Blue?
How many Pageouts since last Startup?
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Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used

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