virtual machine performance on i7 2600s vs. 2600 vs. 2600k

[martijnr]

I'm planning my first build. What I'm trying to achieve is a snappy, though energy-efficient, machine (dual screens) where I can quickly open several VMWare Fusion virtual machines concurrently (say 4: XP, W7, Ubuntu, and a barebones Linux web server). I don't do any gaming, nor any very CPU intensive work other than opening and maintaining those virtual machines for web application testing. Clearly using an SSD (no HDD except for backups) and a multi-threading-capable (i7) CPU will be very suitable for my purpose.

I am trying to decide between the 2600s, 2600 and a 2600k. I realize the 2600k has OS-X compatible integrated graphics and is easily overclockable and that for the 2600s and 2600 I would have to get a low end graphics card. Costs would be similar (the additional graphics card compensates for the price difference). Power consumption of the 2600 + graphics card would be quite high and for the 2600s + graphics card it would probably be similar to the 2600k with integrated graphics.

The advantage of the 2600s and 2600 is that they support Vt-d.

So I'm trying to figure out which benefit is greater for my (VM-use) purpose: Vt-d or the brutal power of a much higher clock speed. I guess the 2600 option would be the middle way, but maybe a slightly overclocked 2600k compensates for the lack of Vt-d. Or am I overestimating the potential benefit of Vt-d?

Can anybody perhaps help me in making this decision?

 

[breiti3000]

Well, imho difficult to say how important it is, but I think one thing is for sure, an SSD!

I've heard of several builds running multiple VMs with either one of the processors.

 

[martijnr]

Thanks.

I also suspect that a fast SSD and having 8 threads will provide a great machine with all clock speeds. Still, I wish I understood the significance of Vt-d better. Back to google...

 

[Coupz]

I have the 2600 and have installed 1 vm and it's pretty fast. How many vm's are you going to run at the same time? If you want to, I can install several VMs on my machine and make a video that you can see the performance

Just tell me how many you want, I will use win 7 professional (32 or 64 bit?) for each vm.

 

[martijnr]

I *believe* the differences would be noticable when you like assign a physical device to the VM like a SAN HBA, network adapter etc.

Thanks. That's what I thought initially as well (which would make Vt-d irrelevant for my purpose). However, after reading more, it may also improve CPU utilization and HDD/SDD reads and writes. It seems the technology is rather new and I'm not even sure if VMWare Fusion 4 and any of the current Gigabyte desktop motherboards (I plan on using Gigabyte to keep it simple) support it already. So I think I'll just forget about Vt-d in my component selection.

I have the 2600 and have installed 1 vm and it's pretty fast. How many vm's are you going to run at the same time? If you want to, I can install several VMs on my machine and make a video that you can see the performance

Just tell me how many you want, I will use win 7 professional (32 or 64 bit?) for each vm.

Thanks a lot Coupz! However, that's really too much work. I'll worry about Vt-d for my 'upgrade build' in 2013, I think. I'll let price be the main criterion for selecting one of the three flavours of the i7 2600[x] CPU.

Thanks for helping out!