>>>There's no difference in accessing 64-bit SQL Server from outside.
>>>
>>
>>And it is very noticeably faster than 32-bit SQL Server!
>
>Because it's running on better hardware. :)

Not necessarily.

Last year we upgraded a dual Xeon server from Win Server 2003 w/SQL 2005 to Server 2003 X64 w/SQL 2005 x64. we had been running a large production database for about 6 months on 32 bit before upgrading (I finally convinced the IT folks that 64bit Windows wasn't a bad thing).

Performance on queries that had been somewhat slow (things that took a few seconds or more) were considerably faster on the 64bit version.