I5 or I7 for VMWare 10

[davidst99]

Hi,

I currently have a I5 3570K and running VMWare 10 running about two VMs at a time. If I upgrade to a Core i7 4770K with hyper threading would I see an improvement on the VMs? I have 16 GB of ram. I'm running Windows 8.1 and have a Win 7 VM and a Ubuntu VM that I need for work. Thank you.

David

 

[TeknoBug]

Non-K i5 and i7's has better VM instructions (VT-d) in which you'll want an i7 4771.

 

[Dahak]

it depends on what those vm's are doing, and if you are running into speed limitations. usually you will see io/hdd limitations before hitting cpu limitations. So if they sit idle for 90% of the time, upgrading a cpu will not help that much

but if you are going to upgrade, get one of the non-k's cpu's as Teknobug mentioned

 

[Mir96TA]

Amd have a better platform for that purpose.
They have hardware pass through AMD-Vi (VT-D). Make sure Video card and MB are compatible along CPU.

 

[Headfoot]

Amd have a better platform for that purpose.
They have hardware pass through AMD-Vi (VT-D). Make sure Video card and MB are compatible along CPU.

That statement is way too broad to be correct. Way better at what? As far as I know the AMD cpus aren't faster in anything than hyperthreaded Haswell. I can't recall even one benchmark where a 8350 wins vs. a 4771 for example.

VT-d is only relevant if you need hardware passthrough to a PCI based addon card, sound/graphics/ethernet. If you don't need that, then VT-d makes literally 0 difference. Further, VT-d is HIGHLY dependent on the quality of the particular implementation by the motherboard manufacturer. If you need this feature, you must do some serious research to find a consumer motherboard that actually works correctly with it. AFAIK the only motherboards you can count on working (as a general rule) with VT-d are server/workstation boards with Xeons.

OP: Hyperthreaded CPU is going to make a difference, though it is not readily apparent how much of a difference. Virtualization loves cores so adding the virtual threads should help. If you are going to change motherboards, you should consider going to IvyBridge-E 4930k for 6 cores/12 threads for a noticeable upgrade. You also get the benefit of higher RAM bandwidth due to quad channel which may help if your VMs are loaded with memory intensive workloads

Otherwise I would just upgrade your CPU within the socket to an i7 3770 so you can keep your same motherboard and everything else.

 

[DrMrLordX]

VT-d is only relevant if you need hardware passthrough to a PCI based addon card,

That is applicable in the case of the 4771 as well. If the OP doesn't need hardware passthrough, he would (for example) be better off with the 4770k if he plans to overclock.

If he goes with an AMD processor, he can get VT-d and overclocking on the same processor without having to pick which feature he wants and without having to get an expensive, top-shelf product with halo pricing on it (4930K @ ~$580). The tradeoff, of course, is that he might not like the single-threaded performance of the AMD chip, at least not without some serious overclocking. And if he does overclock, then there are thermals . . .

If the OP could tell us whether or not he needs to overclock and whether or not he needs any kind of hardware passthrough, it would make the decision easier for him and the recommendations easier for us.

 

[Headfoot]

I assume he won't be overclocking because he said its for work and that is generally the case.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Normally I would assume the same thing, but he's already got a K processor which implies that he might already be doing some overclocking. That being said, without some confirmation from the OP, it's impossible to know exactly what he's doing.

 

[Rakehellion]

The 3570k has virtualization, not that it matters much.

The 4770k would be a nice speed increase, but you'll need to buy a new motherboard as well. The 3770k will be a nice speed increase and you can keep your motherboard.