Heh, I know my hardware rocks (for desktop pc standards anyway). That machine is just one of my servers. My desktop is an XP box with similar stats, which has no problem just playing the game live or emu.
At one time (when TESS was running live), I had spawned 30 static and 10 dynamic zones. The server was barely stirring as far as utilization - but that was with maybe 2-4 players. My concerns start when there are 25-50 or more. I know bandwidth might be the issue then. Plus, I have a "mini farm" set up here (for my job) of 4 servers spec'd like above - 2 Windows Server 2003 x64, and 2 Linux FC4 and a FC5 x64 ("No really, honey. I do need this stuff for work. I swear!") Try selling that to the missus
I *could* always spread my zones around on those servers...
Btw, I am scouring eBay lately looking for a good deal on a Dell PowerEdge. A place I have yet to go in my home-networking experiments; a >real< server.