Significant performance difference between v8.0.6 and v8.1.7?

I've run into an interesting situation. The shop I'm working with has a v8.0.6.0.0 installation and a v8.1.7.0.0 installation. (I know, there are patches and more recent RDBMS versions available.) Both systems are Windows 2000 Server. (I know, v8.0.6 isn't certified for W2K and some form of UNIX would be a better performer.)

The v8.1.7 has a single processor (PIII of some flavor), a single IDE hard disk and 256MB of memory.

The v8.0.6 has dual 1+GHz processors, dual SCSI host adapters w/5 hard disks (JBOD) and 512MB of memory.

A 6GB Export (source = v8.0.6) loaded into the v8.1.7 installation in approximately 6 hours, according to the customer. The same Export took over 20 hours to load into the v8.0.6 installation. Both Imports took place at the console and no other applications were in use. I am at a loss as to why the big difference in Import times.

I've looked at some UTLSTAT reports to see if I could identify any database instance resource problems on the v8.0.6 installation, but there appears to be nothing outstanding. Any INIT.ORA tweaks would not yield a significant performance gain. Memory is being fully utilized without swapping to disk, and the tablespace files (and resulting I/O) are spread fairly evenly across the 4 available drives. None of the Oracle files reside on the O/S drive. According to all the pictures in the book, the v8.0.6 installation should be a far superior performer than the v8.1.7 installation.

I suspect the performance problem is one of two possibilities, but would appreciate other ideas (or confirmation I haven't yet lost my last marble):

• The SCSI host adapter drivers may be out-of-date or improperly installed.
• There were very significant performance issues with v8.0.6 that were resolved by v8.1.7.

Can anybody here confirm or deny SIGNIFICANT performance issues between the two Oracle versions that would account for the painfully slow Import on v8.0.6?

If there are significant performance issues with v8.0.6.0.0, were these performance issues fixed up in v8.0.6.3.5?

Thanx in advance. Received on Mon May 13 2002 - 06:38:53 CDT