Intel Adds Virtualization to Five CPUs

[exit2dos]

Intel has just announced that it will be making an update to five of its processors, in order to add support for Intel Virtualization Technology. The CPUs which will get their virtualization on are the tray Core 2 Quad Q8300, the Core 2 Duo E7500 and E7400, and the Pentium E5400 and E5300.

According to Intel, the VT-enhanced versions of the mentioned chips will start being delivered on June 12 and since they'll feature new S-spec and MM numbers they may require a BIOS update (to enable the virtualization tech).

TechConnect Magazine - Intel adds virtualization to Q8300, four other processors

[exit2dos]

Good news for those wanting a cheap system and be able to run the XP VM on Win 7.

[albundy2]

huh.... sooo.. they decided virtualization was important to those that buy these chips?!?

weird, whoda thunk it. i know it was something that detracted me from these chips. dont use virtualization, but it would be nice to have the ability should i ever need it, without buying a new chip to go with that piece of software that needed the support.

[randomizer]

Obviously pushed by Win 7.

[Violet_wind]

Yeh...

[m25]

huh.... sooo.. they decided virtualization was important to those that buy these chips?!?

Win 7 needs it to run the included version of XP. While AMD is more uniform in the distribution of features, i.e. all CPUws in a new series/arch/process get the same features, Intel liked to play switching on and off with things like NX, VT and until recently with x64 instructions. Actually this list of "upgraded" CPUs comes a couple of days after another list showing CPUs that won't be able to run 7 in XP mode:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/win...ntel,7709.html
While AMD includes VT in all post 2005 CPUs, from socket 939 A64s, the holes even in the recent lineups of intel are pretty consistent, thre's lots of recent CPUs, like E7200/7300/7400/7500, Q8200/8200S/8300/8400/8400S or E4300/4400/4500/4600/4700 and E2140/2160/2180/2200/2220 that won't be able to run XP within Win7 and that is quite discouraging.

[qcmadness]

Win 7 needs it to run the included version of XP. While AMD is more uniform in the distribution of features, i.e. all CPUws in a new series/arch/process get the same features, Intel liked to play switching on and off with things like NX, VT and until recently with x64 instructions. Actually this list of "upgraded" CPUs comes a couple of days after another list showing CPUs that won't be able to run 7 in XP mode:
Which Intel CPUs Support XP Mode Virtualization? - Tom's Hardware
While AMD includes VT in all post 2005 CPUs, from socket 939 A64s, the holes even in the recent lineups of intel are pretty consistent, thre's lots of recent CPUs, like E7200/7300/7400/7500, Q8200/8200S/8300/8400/8400S or E4300/4400/4500/4600/4700 and E2140/2160/2180/2200/2220 that won't be able to run XP within Win7 and that is quite discouraging.

and will hurt future sales if intel does not add vt back

[randomizer]

Intel leaves out VT in all the "budget" lines of CPUs. It's all very neat. The only real oddball is the E8190. It shouldn't really be named that because it's not the same as the rest of the E8000 series.

[huddy]

dang... and I had just bought 2 E7400 chips for $60 a pop a few days ago... oh well.

[akhilles]

Thanks God. I held off buying a low-ender for my family rig. Yep, it'll have W7. XP mode would be a bonus.

[m25]

Intel leaves out VT in all the "budget" lines of CPUs. It's all very neat. The only real oddball is the E8190. It shouldn't really be named that because it's not the same as the rest of the E8000 series.

Neat?! The latest windows OS absolutely requires VT to run the XP subsystem, which more or less all users will once in a while have to use and half of Intel's CPUs currently on the market, including quads, does not support it. Core number, cache and frequency is something you can play with to create a CPU lineup but intel will finally learn to play with crucial technologies like x64 and VT; they cost you nothing and they're already present in your CPU die, so why play switching them on and off to create different products and price points, it's so stupid.
They had all those P4/PD users stuck with 32 bit only CPUs unable to upgrade to a 64 bit system, now users that won't be able to use such an important part of their future OS,... an elegant way to make your system inadequate as soon as possible and rip you more and more money

[GeorgeOu]

Good news for those wanting a cheap system and be able to run the XP VM on Win 7.

I still don't know why someone would want to run XP on a Windows 7 machine. You can make XP software work on Windows 7 by setting it to XP mode within Windows 7 and worst case, you can run it as an admin. The other issue with this is that you need a fairly expensive version of Windows (Pro or Enterprise or Ultimate Edition) to get that XP virtualization feature.

[suprnova74]

some apps still don't play nice with Vista/Windows 7 even with app compat mode. For those apps, XP will be needed.

[logain]

Intel leaves out VT in all the "budget" lines of CPUs. It's all very neat. The only real oddball is the E8190. It shouldn't really be named that because it's not the same as the rest of the E8000 series.

Yea it definitely is an oddball in more ways than one. Main reason I switched to an AMD rig was VT support. Not to mention price compared to Yorkfield and not wanting to shove more money into a dead socket. Not to mention the fact that IP35 pro does not seem to like ram over ddr2 800.

[Apt403]

Same with Hyperthreading on their server parts. The entry level Nehalems don't have HT, that starts with the 5520.

Their loss though.. The 5502/4/6 would be more competitve with AMD's Shanghai parts if they had HT, and they could focus on scaling clock speed to compete with the Istanbul chips.

[lostandwandering]

Is it bad that I didn't even notice that my E7200 didn't have VT? Oh well, I don't need it for anything that I do. And since I don't run VM on that computer it doesn't matter.