ML370G4 & DL380G4 - Looking for Intel VT compatible processors

[dcolpitts]

We've got several ML370G4 and DL380G4 servers that have recently come out of production (and are obviously off warranty). We were thinking of using a couple of these boxes as test beds with VMware ESX 3.5, however some of the OSes we need to run on these boxes are 64 bit. While these machines' CPUs will natively support a 64 bit OS, they do not have Intel Virtualization Technology compatible processors.

So - this is a three part question... First, has anyone successfully replaced the orginal non-VT processors in an ML370G4 or DL380G4 with VT enabled Processors? Second, if so - which Intel processor did you replace them with? And finally third - where you able to actually get a 64 bit OS installed under ESX once the new processors were in place?

I'm suspect the answer to all three of these questions is no, but I thought I'd ask anyways - it seems like an awful waste to scrap these G4s when we could put them to good use in our testing lab...

dcc