Another new PC, looking at non-K Intel for VM's

[BarkingGhostar]

So, I'm building another PC. This one will only use office applications, handle surfing, email, browsing, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I was thinking an i% non-K to experiment with VM's under VirtualBox. I've noticed under my current GA-Z87X-UD4H the VT-d option is disabled because of the K processor in it. I figured this is why I cannot get VB to run any VM's.

Anyone running non-K i5 boxes and VB? Host and guest operating systems would be LinuxMint, W7 Pro and OS X Mavericks. I'll mate this with another GA-Z87X-UD4H motherboard and from an SSD.

Thoughts?

 

[ShintaiDK]

You need VT-X, not VT-D to run VMs in VB. VT-D is for passthrough devices.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

OK, thanks for the enlightenment. I wonder why Intel disables VT-d on K processors then. Is VT-X enabled on K processors? I have to wonder why I cannot run VM's on my 4770K & GA-Z87X-UD4H combination.

 

[ShintaiDK]

VT-X is enabled on all CPUs. You might simply need to enable a BIOS setting.

 

[Shivansps]

OK, thanks for the enlightenment. I wonder why Intel disables VT-d on K processors then. Is VT-X enabled on K processors? I have to wonder why I cannot run VM's on my 4770K & GA-Z87X-UD4H combination.

I have already explained it on the other tropic, VT-D is not officially supported on Z/H/B chipset, the chipset has nothing to do with it, so VT-D is really a optional feature to those mbs, it depends on OEM to implement it or not, as it takes dev time, most do not support it, even if it says "VT-D" on bios there is a high chance it will not work.

In order to use VT-D you need to go for a C or a Q chipset, those do not support OC, as they are intended for another sector, so there is no point in giving support for VT-D on K cpus.

Anyway, what you need is VT-X, every cpu and mb supports it, its likely disabled on bios.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I just checked and both Intel Virtualization Technology and VT-d are enabled.

 

[ph2000]

virtualbox doesnt require VT-x or VT-d to run

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html

1.3. Features overview

No hardware virtualization required. For many scenarios, VirtualBox does not require the processor features built into newer hardware like Intel VT-x or AMD-V. As opposed to many other virtualization solutions, you can therefore use VirtualBox even on older hardware where these features are not present. The technical details are explained in Section 10.3, “Hardware vs. software virtualization”.

 

[redzo]

VirtualBox can run without vt-d and vt-x.
Vt-d is not mandatory for VirtualBox. Virtualbox doesn't even support vt-d. Vt-d can be supported by hardware(CPU+MOBO) but VirtualBox can't use it because it doesn't know how to. It's jus not implemented in VirtualBox. However, vt-x helps a lot and it is a wise move to run VirtualBox on vt-x enabled hardware.

Vt-d brings a lot of benefits. Unfortunately, even microsoft's hyper-v makes very limited use of it. It is a very important virtualization feature, but it lacks vt-x's application support as most of the hardware is not vt-d capable. Unfortunately, even today, vt-d is still server specific. The damn small market for the qX7 series chipsets makes it irrelevant to developers. I think that intel is to blame for this situation as they still continue to cripple cpus features and plan/allow this fragmentation.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

There is nothing in my motherboard's documentation that says 'VT-x' and unless I can somehow resolve this to mean 'Intel Virtualization Technology' then I am lost on how to move forward, and therefore should just give up. No one is maintaining a database that I am aware of (ignorance?) for known good hardware for using VB.

 

[Jovec]

There is nothing in my motherboard's documentation that says 'VT-x' and unless I can somehow resolve this to mean 'Intel Virtualization Technology' then I am lost on how to move forward, and therefore should just give up. No one is maintaining a database that I am aware of (ignorance?) for known good hardware for using VB.

If you aren't doing production VMs they don't worry. Vbox or VMware Player will run fine on K procs.

 

[SolMiester]

I was going to suggest VMware Player!....

http://www.vmware.com/products/player

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Well, my experience at trying to get VB to run under OS X (host) for W7 (Guest) was a bust. I then tried VB under W7 (Host) for OS X (Guest) and another bust. The only time I got it to run was under Linux (Host) and W7 (Guest and that was on a 1st Gen i3.

I have yet to get VB to run in OS X or W7 as Host and OS X, W7 or Linux as guest on my 4770K machine.

SolMeister, I was not aware that VMware Player was free for home use. Thanks for that bit of enlightenment.

 

[Jovec]

I've gotten an OSX guest to work on a Win7 host using VB by following some tutorial I found on-line. I don't know if Player will work though, since you need efi support in the VM along with a bunch of other restrictions.

 

[ph2000]

what your current problem on running the VM?

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Honestly, since my Hackintosh is based on the Unibeast install method I was trying to get the same to work virtually, but this needed the ability to boot from USB in the virtual environment.

 

[el etro]

virtualbox doesnt require VT-x or VT-d to run

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html

Not(you can enable or disable it on BIOS), but using VT-x or VT-d improves the performance of the virtual machine!

 

[redzo]

For gigabyte, you've got this bios settings:

1. Setting: "Intel Virtualization Technology". This is vt-x. *available on k and non-k cpus. VB should work like a charm with this enabled on a z87x-ud4h with k and non k. If it's not working, then you're probably experiencing a VB bug or you're running an unsupported VB config/OS profile which may require additional tweaking(in the end, you may or may not get it to work).

2. Setting: "VT-d". This is vt-d. *not available on k cpus.


As long as you're using VirtualBox, vt-d has no importance to you because VirtualBox does not implement it. Just leave vt-x enabled and VB will make use of it.

From my experience, VB is a pretty buggy application. You may encounter nasty bugs even if you're running a supported configuration/OS profile. If you're trying to run an unsupported configuration, that's even a bigger pain in the ...

Visit their support/help forum and ask nicely for their help.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

While both are enabled (by default) in my BIOS, I cannot change the value for VT-d.

I have visited their support forums, but they are not very verbose. I just wish VB supposed the ability to boot by USB.

 

[Jovec]

Presumably most USB boot images could be replaced by CD boot images.