[lug] Linux hardware

[Facey, Aaron]

Hello-
We are looking at Linux as a replacement to our Sun compute server farm.
Basically we only use the machines for cpu intense jobs via LSF. We do not
store anything on the local disk. We do need gigabit cards and probably 2GB
mem per cpu in a rack mountable chassis.

My hardware questions:
Is there anyone out there with a similar setup?
Dual CPU vs. single CPU - is there a performance difference?
What would be the optimum setup at a reasonable cost?
What are the performance differences between Xeon, itanium, and p4
processors? 
Would one be better than the other performance wise?
Vendor's - Who is the best - hp, dell, ibm?

Thanks-
Aaron Facey