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Intel VT Question

DeaconFrost

DeaconFrost

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I'm building a new PC for my wife, as she is starting a new job as a help desk person at her nursing home complex. I currently have an E4300 I am going to use in her PC, but I'm tempted by some deals on the E6300. Now, on to the question.

I'm going to run VirtualBox on her machine so she can play around with XP and 2000 in some VMs. VirtualBox supports the Intel VT feature. Assuming her system has 4 GB of memory, would Intel VT make much of a difference on the performance of a single VM running XP or 2000? Each VM will get 1 GB of memory, and only one VM will run at a time. The E6300 supports it, but her current E4300 doesn't, and I'm hoping the performance of the VM with the 4300 and 1 GB of memory would be plenty good enough for her use. Thanks.
 
The processor is ok. The main thing you need is more RAM. Virtual machines take up quite a bit of it. 1GB just isn't enough for that.
 
I don't think I entirely agree with Dan's comment, though it's in the right direction. The amount of memory required by a virtual machine is (nearly) equal to the amount of memory required by the operating system + applications running within the VM. Assuming your wife will not be running applications inside the VM that require more than the 1GB you propose, you'll be fine.

For example, I've done OS research in the past that relied heavily on using VMs (using VMware). Since all I needed was a clean install of XP, I could easily assign 256MB to its virtual machine, because nothing else was running in it. 256MB is fine for XP if all you're doing is booting the OS and, perhaps, opening a web browser. Last year, I fired up 5 virtual machines running a stripped down Linux distro (no X) at the same time on the machine in my signature, each with 256MB of RAM, and everything worked fine.

As far as VT technology is concerned, there is some positive performance impact depending on the virtual machine monitor you use, but it's not that significant. For example, before VT, VMware implemented a huge number of clever tricks to make VMs run faster even without VT. They had to, because they were around before VT existed. Now that VT is available, other developers can implement high performance VMMs more easily, which negates some of VMware's advantage. Thus, if you compared VMware performance between the E4300 and E6300, you'd probably not notice as much a difference as if you compared a simpler VMM between the two.
 
mattsaccount said:
I don't think I entirely agree with Dan's comment, though it's in the right direction. The amount of memory required by a virtual machine is (nearly) equal to the amount of memory required by the operating system + applications running within the VM. Assuming your wife will not be running applications inside the VM that require more than the 1GB you propose, you'll be fine.

For example, I've done OS research in the past that relied heavily on using VMs (using VMware). Since all I needed was a clean install of XP, I could easily assign 256MB to its virtual machine, because nothing else was running in it. 256MB is fine for XP if all you're doing is booting the OS and, perhaps, opening a web browser. Last year, I fired up 5 virtual machines running a stripped down Linux distro (no X) at the same time on the machine in my signature, each with 256MB of RAM, and everything worked fine.

As far as VT technology is concerned, there is some positive performance impact depending on the virtual machine monitor you use, but it's not that significant. For example, before VT, VMware implemented a huge number of clever tricks to make VMs run faster even without VT. They had to, because they were around before VT existed. Now that VT is available, other developers can implement high performance VMMs more easily, which negates some of VMware's advantage. Thus, if you compared VMware performance between the E4300 and E6300, you'd probably not notice as much a difference as if you compared a simpler VMM between the two.
Click to expand...

Well I was being conservative with my memory requirements. I like to give my VMs at least 512MB of RAM and I try not to run too many at once. Again it depends on what they are doing. Some of them end up with 384MB of RAM and others more. It just depends on what that VM will be doing.

2GB of RAM is extremely cheap. If you are going to be doing VM work I can't see any reason not to get 2GB of RAM unless you are currently living on unemployment or something.
 
I think the OP is proposing a system with 4GB of RAM w/ 1GB per VM and one VM running at a time, which, based on his description of the application, is more than adequate.
 
Dan_D said:
Well I was being conservative with my memory requirements. I like to give my VMs at least 512MB of RAM and I try not to run too many at once. Again it depends on what they are doing. Some of them end up with 384MB of RAM and others more. It just depends on what that VM will be doing.

2GB of RAM is extremely cheap. If you are going to be doing VM work I can't see any reason not to get 2GB of RAM unless you are currently living on unemployment or something.
Click to expand...

He said that he is assuming 4GB of RAM total, assigning 1GB to the VM.
 
mattsaccount said:
I think the OP is proposing a system with 4GB of RAM w/ 1GB per VM and one VM running at a time, which, based on his description of the application, is more than adequate.
Click to expand...

I must have mis-read it the first time. I re-read it and I think you are right. 1GB of RAM for each VM will certainly be plenty.
 
Yeah, to clarify, her system with be running Vista Home Premium x64, with 4 GB of system memory. I planned on configuring each VM to use 1 GB of memory, which should, in theory, be plenty to run the OS itself. Aside from AV software, I don't see much being installed on these. It's more or less a chance for her to play around with each OS itself, and learn the settings, etc, without messing up an actual install on a computer.
 
DeaconFrost said:
Yeah, to clarify, her system with be running Vista Home Premium x64, with 4 GB of system memory. I planned on configuring each VM to use 1 GB of memory, which should, in theory, be plenty to run the OS itself. Aside from AV software, I don't see much being installed on these. It's more or less a chance for her to play around with each OS itself, and learn the settings, etc, without messing up an actual install on a computer.
Click to expand...

Your going to be in great shape then. Even with the E4300 you should be fine. I ran VM's before on a Celeron 430 equipped with 2GB of RAM and it wasn't as bad as you might think. (I've since replaced that processor with a Core 2 Duo T7200 2.0GHz processor.)
 
DeaconFrost said:
Great, thanks for the info! I'll stick with my E4300 for her, for now.
Click to expand...

You can always change it later if you find that it is inadequate. Don't count out buying a used E6300 or even an E6400. You can find them from time to time on our forums for cheap. You'll start to see more 65nm Core 2 Duo's all the time as quad core processors get more popular and people transition to 45nm parts. (As soon as they are widely available.)
 
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