huge ps_page_viewed table... possible performance impact?

[noesac]

I've been experiencing some performance issues with my site. When I was backing up the database I noticed that it would constantly time out because one table (ps_page_viewed) was simply too big, it's got like 250,000 records in it.

 

Is it possible this might be causing some of my problems?

 

And if so which parts of the system use this data? Could I simply empty it if I'm willing to give up information about which pages people have viewed?