SQL Server 2008 64-Bit vs 32-Bit Performance
I’ve got an x64 machine I do most of my “hard core” development work on, that I’m very happy with. I’m running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and have had few problems. The box only has 4GB RAM, but I almost never hit the ceiling with that, no matter what the heck I do. But recently, we needed to do some work on a database that has some tables with close to 6 million rows, and I needed to build FullText catalogs for some of them. That’s where SQL Server 2008 x64 crapped out . I had memory consumption issues that caused me to have to hold the power button down for 4 seconds just to be able to “get out of Dodge” if you will -- several times too. Mouse didn’t work, machine was unresponsive, etc. – just building a FullText catalog on this big table. Now I don’t care about all the KB’s and suggested “Fixes” and all that. I haven’t got the time to futz with this crap. So I said, OK, let’s get rid of this sucker and see if the x86 version of SQL Server 2008 does better. So I did, and guess what...