[Hampshire] New box for Virtualisation

Hi all

I need some pretty basic advice on building a new box specifically for the purposes of virtualisation (running about 3 servers). My current Sempron 3200+ with 2Gb of RAM isn't cutting it. So, without the funds to go really top end, I'm going for the fastest CPU I can afford and give it plenty of RAM. Q1 - is this a good strategy for virtualisation?

Q2 Do I have to run a 64-bit kernel to address all 6Gb (if I go for that much) RAM? I heard a while back that XP can't handle anything over 2Gb without patching - not sure about Vista. Probably an academic debate because I intend to run Ubuntu - but I wanted to check whether it had the same restriction. The problem is that the graphics card I have in mind (bought for 80UKP last year) didn't work well with 64-bit Ubuntu or Fedora - though that's probably fixed by now. Running in 32-bit mode (both distros) was fine - but would obviously be self defeating if I can only address 1/3 of my RAM as a result of running in 32-bit mode.

Basic questions for a Monday morning I know but a bit of sage advice here could save me a lot of time and money.

Thanks in advance (as always).

Cheers
Rob