best processor , chipset for virtualbox

[tw3ak]

I'm going to build a new system and have the desire to run many virtual machines .. Some of the new motherboards allow me as much as 24gig of ram. Anyone really familiar with cpu's point me in the right direction to maximise my compatibility of using virtual machines to their full potential???

[sej7278]

the most important i guess is that intel vt-x or amd's pacifica is supported, followed by nested paging in the new core-i7 and some phenoms.

64-bit support is pretty much a prerequisite too, otherwise you can't use 64-bit guests or very much ram.

multiple cores is not so important yet without guest-smp, but at least two is good so as not to slow down the host.

for a new system i'd go for a nehalem (corei7) as it has all of the above.

but note that most laptops don't have a bios that lets you enable most of these features, so get a desktop machine.

[fixedwheel]

a cheap way to a powerhouse is an intel P45 chipset board (gigabyte if you can stand the colours) with a q6600 or q6700 quad. The P45 supports up to 16GB DDR2 but i dont know about the availability and pricing of 4GB Modules, 2GB Modules are cheap and you can put 4 of them in most boards so 8GB Ram should not be a problem.

now if you want more i would look for a HP entry Server like the new nehalem ML150 G6 or even the older ML150 G5; the HP xw6600 (and xw8600) Workstation reach the end of production life and maybe you find them for a good price like i did, or have a look at the new z600 ...

[sej7278]

a cheap way to a powerhouse is an intel P45 chipset board (gigabyte if you can stand the colours) with a q6600 or q6700 quad. The P45 supports up to 16GB DDR2 but i dont know about the availability and pricing of 4GB Modules, 2GB Modules are cheap and you can put 4 of them in most boards so 8GB Ram should not be a problem.

yeah i've got an 8gb q6600 (overclocked to 3.2ghz) and it never gets taxed, i've run five vm's easily and usually have two going at any one time.

i have a gigabyte ds3r, which is p35 chipset and can take four ddr2 (or two ddr3) dimms.

[miketrains03]

I use a 940 i7 with 12gb ddr3 (24gb triple channel kits are hard to find) on an asus p6t deluxe v2. It's a beast. I have an xp 64 host and can run 32 or 64 bit vm's and use up to around 10gb ram for vm's. Video card is useless as i just leave most running minimized as servers. Make sure you have a decent hd for vm's and setup. I use two 150gb velociraptors in RAID 0. Try to get a mobo with 2 gigabit ethernet adapters. Preferably ones that support teaming.

Remember, you're limited by the performance of the weakest link in your system.

[sej7278]

Remember, you're limited by the performance of the weakest link in your system.

xp64 in your case seriously dude, that beast deserves linux, xp64 was a hack.

[fixedwheel]

formatting the hdd with ext3 is easy to do

12gb ddr3 (24gb triple channel kits are hard to find)

now that looks like a hard limit of the new nehalem platform: the 4GB DDR3 modules needed to have 24GB with 6 memory slots seem to be very expensive too