[ale] A faster Java box - any tips ??

[Greg]

I am looking for any tips/comments/advice on buying a fast machine to do
J2EE on.  I am developing in Eclipse and working on large web applications
and it seems that my current box is pretty slow.  I am using the one box to
run my database, run whichever AS/Servlets container I need (JBoss, Resin,
or plain old Tomcat), and I try to only recompile whatever has changed and
not the whole thing.  I started out with all of my web apps in the same
workspace but since it slowed it down I now only load one at a time and pull
up any other pages in another app individually if I need to refer to them. 

I have tried developing on a dual 64-bit Opteron (2.0 GHz) with 2 GB of
memory and on a 3.6 GHz HP laptop with 1 GB of memory and the laptop seems
way faster than the dual box.  I have been told that the most important
thing is clock speed and that using 2 processors is irrelevant.  Is this
correct ?  Is AMD's FX line of processors (2.8 GHz) faster than Intel's P4
(I think around 3.74 GHz) ?  Does RAM matter past 1 GB ??  Any opinions of
using a SCSI HD/PCI card vs. a SATA HD through the motherboard ?

I have tried to Google for an answer to this but have found nothing of
substance.  My knowledge of hardware with regards to processors and Java is
sadly lacking.

I would appreciate any tips / advice / comments.  Thanks,

Greg

- apologies to any that are on the ajug-members list as well as this one.

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