CPU ID in the guest OS

[pencho5]

Hi,

I just installed Windows Vista guest in vbox on 64 bit RHEL5. My processor is Xeon W3520 and it has support for all the new multimedia instruction sets like SSSE3, SSE4.1 and SSE4.2.
When I do use the CPUZ processor identification program inside the Vista guest however it can recognize a Pentium 4 like processor with only up to SSE3 instruction set support.
Can you please give me more details on this. I thought the guest OS gets the same CPU as the host but it looks like this is not true. I do have some code that has the new instructions and wanted to try it out in the VM, but now I'm very discouraged.
Are there any plans to add the new instructions any time soon?

Thanks,
Dilyan

[pencho5]

Hey,

It's me again. I'm really interested to know more about what processor is available to the guest machine? Is nobody from Sun reading this post?
Please help me get more info.

Thanks!

[Sasquatch]

The CPU has VT-x, did you enable that and check again? When using VT-x, more instructions from the CPU should be available, like 64 bit.

[pencho5]

The CPU has VT-x, did you enable that and check again? When using VT-x, more instructions from the CPU should be available, like 64 bit.

I did this but I still can't see all the instructions. You can see the screenshot from CPUZ shows that the processor in the virtual machine has maximum SSE3 and EM64T which is exactly Pentium 4. I need SSSE3, SSE4.1 which are available on my CPU but not in the VM. Is there any other way of enabling those?

Thanks

[Sasquatch]

It's probably a limitation of supported CPU instructions in VB itself. You can open a bug report in the Bugtracker (separate account needed), and add it as a wish list.

[baf]

Have you removed power since enabling vt-x? There are several reports that only a full powercycle helps.