I find identically-specced AVDs run and load far better on my home machine (Phenom II x4 945/8GB RAM/Win7 HP 64bit) than they do on my work machine (Core2Duo/3GB RAM/Ubuntu 11.04 32bit).
As you're essentially running a virtual machine, I would personally go for nothing less than a dual core/4GB, though highly recommend a quad/8GB if you can splash out for that.
