i7 or i5 for Virtual Machines

[t0m3k51]

I decided to go with this board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131621

However, I plan on running Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux using VirtualBox or VM Ware.

My questions is as follows;

Is the i5 good enough or should I go with an i7?

I plan on having 8GB of ram.

 

[stargazr]

The i5 should be plenty. If this is a new build you should look at the new Sandy Bridge Intel CPU i5-2500K.

 

[nanaki333]

for desktops and even servers that will host active VMs, i go with AMD based processors. more cores for less money and just allocate entire cores to the VMs. my exchange server is a dual 8 core with 4 cores for each of the roles in hyper-V's. my desktop PC is a 1055 so i can just leave do whatever i want on the VMs and not worry about things getting choked up on my main drive and have free cores and memory

 

[t0m3k51]

If I decide to go with AMD-based board, will I be able to run Mac OS X in a virtual machine?

 

[Makaveli]

Are you planning on putting an SSD in there, i've heard that VM's on SSD's are en excellent combination.

 

[t0m3k51]

Are you planning on putting an SSD in there, i've heard that VM's on SSD's are en excellent combination.

No, SATA, but 6/GBs

 

[nanaki333]

Are you planning on putting an SSD in there, i've heard that VM's on SSD's are en excellent combination.

anything on SSDs are an excellent combination

 

[amenx]

Guest VMs on VirtualBox v4.0 are so fast on regular HDs they already feel like on SSD.

 

[nyker96]

Guest VMs on VirtualBox v4.0 are so fast on regular HDs they already feel like on SSD.

really? I'm using VMware and it feels much slower than regular HD access, not even going to bother comparing the VM HDs to an SSD. What medicine does Vbox has that VMware doesn't to make the virtual HD that much faster?

 

[flexcore]

If you go with AMD get yourself a good 890FX board with x6. The 890FX has IOMMU support whereas the rest do not. Allows hardware direct access to vms. Googlefoo will go along way to help you make a good decision.

 

[masteryoda34]

If I decide to go with AMD-based board, will I be able to run Mac OS X in a virtual machine?

You can, but it's more difficult. I believe you need to use an image with a patched kernel or something to run on AMD.

 

[iluvdeal]

really? I'm using VMware and it feels much slower than regular HD access, not even going to bother comparing the VM HDs to an SSD. What medicine does Vbox has that VMware doesn't to make the virtual HD that much faster?

Have you tried the option to preallocate disk space to a VM in VMware? That is suppose to improve performance a bit, I haven't tried it yet though.