Order by clause performance

Question

I have two tables table A (with 26 columns most of them varchar2) with 1.2 million records and table 2 with 30 records. I am doing a join and then ordering the result set. I have two set of queries one takes 164 seconds and the other 1.2 seconds.
I am not able to figure out why such a drastic difference when the only difference is in first case I do order by on a few columns and in the second case I do it on entire row.
TableA: firstname and lastname column are functional indexed (using upper)
Search by firstname 'JOHN%' returns back 37000+ records.
SLOW QUERY (takes 164 seconds):_
SELECT * FROM (
SELECT A.firstname, A.lastname, A.col4, A.col5......................A.col15
FROM tableA A, tableB B
WHERE A.col3 = B.col3 AND upper(A.FIRSTNAME) LIKE 'JOHN%'
ORDER BY uppeR(A.LASTNAME)
WHERE ROWNUM <251
FAST Query (takes 1.2s):_
SELECT A.firstname, A.lastname, A.col4, A.col5......................A.col15
FROM (
SELECT *
FROM tableA A
WHERE uppeR(A.FIRSTNAME) LIKE 'JOHN%'
ORDER BY upper(A.LASTNAME)
) A, tableB B
WHERE A.col3 = B.col3
and ROWNUM < 251

Answer 1

Hold your horses!
First of all:
Use the {noformat}{noformat} tags when posting code or execution plans etc, so formatting/indentation will be preserved and we'll be able to read/understand much faster.
( {noformat}..{noformat} - Displays everything between the tags as programming code )
Secondly, please read these informative threads:
When your query takes too long ...
HOW TO: Post a SQL statement tuning request - template posting
and after that, post all relevant details as pointed out by Rob and Randolf.