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riviera74
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Virtualization and Ivy Bridge

Sat Jun 02, 2012 11:50 am

I was reading the July 2012 issue of Maximum PC (sorry, article not posted online) where they were talking about creating virtual machines within Windows 7 (such as running OSX and Linux). My question is what Ivy Bridge (and Sandy Bridge) processors and chipsets support virtualization (e.g. with VMWare). I am not sure which ones I should look at: Z68 vs. Z77; core i5 or i7; -K or non-K models.

Thank you in advance for your input. If you have any other advice about this, I would like to hear that too.
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FubbHead
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Re: Virtualization and Ivy Bridge

Sat Jun 02, 2012 11:57 am

I think most of their processors do nowadays, except the budget models.

Easiest way to find out, though, is to just google the model and you'll get Intel's own specs somewhere at the top. They're informative and easy to read.
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UberGerbil
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Re: Virtualization and Ivy Bridge

Sat Jun 02, 2012 12:24 pm

Generally speaking for VM software that requires any hardware support at all you only need what Intel calls VT-x, you do not also need VT-d. The -K processors don't support the latter, but that doesn't matter for the most part (there are cases that require VT-d of course but not for basic VM support). Intel's "ark" allows you to query for specific Ivy Bridge i7 and i5 models with particular features.
 
tesmar
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Re: Virtualization and Ivy Bridge

Sat Jun 02, 2012 4:20 pm

UberGerbil wrote:
Generally speaking for VM software that requires any hardware support at all you only need what Intel calls VT-x, you do not also need VT-d. The -K processors don't support the latter, but that doesn't matter for the most part (there are cases that require VT-d of course but not for basic VM support). Intel's "ark" allows you to query for specific Ivy Bridge i7 and i5 models with particular features.


The i3 Sandy bridge processors also support Virtualization Vt-x
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riviera74
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Re: Virtualization and Ivy Bridge

Sat Jun 02, 2012 4:38 pm

I have certainly learned a lot. I guess since VT-x is supported on the CPU, then the Z68 and Z77 chipsets support that feature too. Thanks a lot to everyone here.
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UberGerbil
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Re: Virtualization and Ivy Bridge

Sun Jun 03, 2012 4:38 pm

tesmar wrote:
The i3 Sandy bridge processors also support Virtualization Vt-x
Yes, but the OP originally mentioned just i5 and i7 so I assumed that was the scope and the i3 models weren't an option.
 
riviera74
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Re: Virtualization and Ivy Bridge

Sun Jun 03, 2012 10:29 pm

UberGerbil wrote:
tesmar wrote:
The i3 Sandy bridge processors also support Virtualization Vt-x
Yes, but the OP originally mentioned just i5 and i7 so I assumed that was the scope and the i3 models weren't an option.


I mentioned the i5 and the i7 because I figured that those would give me the best performance for the dollar and that the i3 CPUs were a little lacking.
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zzz
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Re: Virtualization and Ivy Bridge

Mon Jun 04, 2012 12:04 am

All modern cpu's support *virtualization. The features the others are commenting on pertain to running a headless vm server OR clients. (VT-x for server and VT-d for client PC's). If you want to just load up another OS in a vm, an i5 would be good, an i7 better, the answer to that question is 'will I use it every once in a while or often?'

EDIT: There's a program for MAC called Parallels, which does exactly what you're asking about, I can't be bothered to look it up but that's how long it's been since regular hardware became capable of what you want to do.
 
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Re: Virtualization and Ivy Bridge

Mon Jun 04, 2012 10:50 am

zzz wrote:
The features the others are commenting on pertain to running a headless vm server OR clients. (VT-x for server and VT-d for client PC's).

This is not correct. A long time ago VMware was pretty much the first out of the gate, and they do virtualization entirely in software. They called that binary translation IIRC. Then, to enhance performance, both Intel and AMD introduced CPU support and the result is VT-x/AMD-V. Windows 7's "XP Mode" (can be used to virtualized other OSes too, it is based on VirtualPC) requires VT-x. That is very "client". VT-d/AMD-Vi is more hardware support to allow virtual machines to access I/O devices more efficiently. This is a higher end features for workstation/server class hosts.
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Re: Virtualization and Ivy Bridge

Thu Jun 14, 2012 11:59 am

Flying Fox wrote:
zzz wrote:
The features the others are commenting on pertain to running a headless vm server OR clients. (VT-x for server and VT-d for client PC's).

This is not correct. A long time ago VMware was pretty much the first out of the gate, and they do virtualization entirely in software. They called that binary translation IIRC. Then, to enhance performance, both Intel and AMD introduced CPU support and the result is VT-x/AMD-V. Windows 7's "XP Mode" (can be used to virtualized other OSes too, it is based on VirtualPC) requires VT-x. That is very "client". VT-d/AMD-Vi is more hardware support to allow virtual machines to access I/O devices more efficiently. This is a higher end features for workstation/server class hosts.


Agree. VT-x is quite important for a consumer CPU also. On the other side, VT-d depends on the integrate northbridge/MMU and it is really useful only in selected server workloads _and_ with other hardware (eg: multichannel NIC) supporting it.

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Re: Virtualization and Ivy Bridge

Thu Jun 14, 2012 2:11 pm

tesmar wrote:
UberGerbil wrote:
Generally speaking for VM software that requires any hardware support at all you only need what Intel calls VT-x, you do not also need VT-d. The -K processors don't support the latter, but that doesn't matter for the most part (there are cases that require VT-d of course but not for basic VM support). Intel's "ark" allows you to query for specific Ivy Bridge i7 and i5 models with particular features.


The i3 Sandy bridge processors also support Virtualization Vt-x


Even Pentium and Celeron version of SB (and even older lynnfield-based) support Vt-x

Out of all modern intel CPU's, only Atom lacks Vt-x support

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