Oracle 9i for x86-32 vs x86-64

Hi All!

I need to upgrade an oracle server. For a new server, I picked dual Xeon Intel board and 2G of memory (a lot of people would say "too low", but the person who manages db says that it would be enough for 2-3 years.

Now the question is - board and CPUs support EM64T, should I pick up x86-64 version of Oracle? Maxumim amount of supported memory is really out of question, it's all about performance. I can't find any benchmarks or comparsions of 32-bit and 64-bit versions on the same hardware, so I can't even guess the benefit of using 64 bits here. 10% faster math operations? 5% more transactions per second? 1% lower performance in our tasks? I don't know.

The problem is, however, that we don't have x86-64 version of RHEL, and will probably have to order a fresh RHEL4 for that. And then maybe I will experience a lot of wonderful problems with it. It's not very hard, but I don't want to spend time, money and nerves if it won't pay back later at all.

The best thing would be some detailed benchmark, but if there isn't, something general like transactions increase will do.

NB: I don't really know a lot about Oracle, I'm a sysadmin who will install and manage the system, and I'll just forward the info to our developers, and they will decide whether they really need it.

-- 

Vladimir