Lowered NVPS significantly, but data being written to db the same size?

[zillions]

Hi guys,
Kind of a strange issue here.
Were were running low on space on our db servers, and decided to lower the frequency of all of our checks from 120sec, to 300sec. This cut our NVPS from 1390 to about 780. However, each day, we're getting about the same number of data points.
We showed a negligible drop in values processed by the server, though NVPS did drop by about half.

Any ideas on why the data written didn't change? I wouldn't have to restart the server services would I?

[zillions]

Additionally, I went in and checked the actual values for several unique itemID's, and the numbers are half of what they were...

On host1:
CPU load 15 min average: itemid=95815
By my count:
Before: 557
After: 287

On host2:
CPU System time: itemid=248545
By my count:
Before: 559
After: 286

These are the value counts that are written to the DB, so I don't get where the extra space is coming from.