In order to reduce the load on your category and search result pages, you'll want to carefully choose only the vital attribute sets (filters) for each category. In order to do this, you need to go to "Catalog --> Attributes --> Manage Attribute Sets" and then select the attribute set that you want to edit.   Next you will want to find any of the attributes that are unneccessary and click & drag them to the window panel that is marked as "Unassigned Attributes" as this will disable them. Alternatively, if there is an entire group of unnecessary attributes, you can select that Attribute Group and click "Delete Selected Group." In the example below, you see that I have selected the attribute e_green_compliance_certificate_authority and indicate that I would drag that attribute to the "Unassigned Attributes" pane which would disable it. Alternatively, I could click "Miscellaneous" and then "Delete Selected Group" which would then delete all of the attributes from e_green_compliance_certificate_authority to e_assembly_required.