Need help selecting Hardware

OK, well my mate is going to build a pc which will be mainly for 3D editing such as in 3ds Max 7 or Maya. he is thinking of going for a dual cpu system with amd opteron and dual nvidia quadro cards. as the mobo he wants to use the Thunder K8WE. he wants to start out with 8GB of ram but might go for 16Gb in the end... also he is thinking of using maya on a linux platform...
personally i think he should go for a dual Intel cpu system, because i think they are more stable... im hoping that u guys can give me some advice that i can pass on to him.. any suggestions will be much appreciated! cheers