"John Allgood" <jallgood@the-allgoods.net> writes:
> ... The other configuration was RHEL3 and Postgres 7.4.13 and Redhat
> Cluster Suite. The application seemed to run much faster on the older
> equipment.
While I agree with the other comments that you should think about moving
to something newer than 7.4.x, there really shouldn't be any meaningful
performance difference between 7.4.13 and 7.4.16. I'm guessing some
sort of pedestrian pilot error, like not using similar postgresql.conf
settings or forgetting to ANALYZE the database after reloading it into
the new installation.
regards, tom lane