Re: Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD X2 ?

[Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>]

On Mon, Jun 04, 2007 at 12:53:52AM +0200, Joel CARNAT wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I plan to replace my AMD Athlon64 (Shuttle SN85G4, nVidia nForce3 250)
> with some proc that has hardware virtualization enabled. I will go for a
> desktop-like configuration, not a rack server.
> 
> Are there any pro/cons for using AMD rather than Intel ?
> The target is netbsd/xen as dom0, 3 netbsd/xen as domU and windows/xp domU.
> Depending on the RAM I get, there may be another domU for testings and
> compilation (netbsd/xen, solaris, ...) that won't be up all time.
> 
> I'm thinking of buying one of those :
> - Shuttle SD36G5 or AOpen MP945 (Intel 945G/945GM), Intel Core 2 Duo E6420
> and 2Go DDR2-SDRAM PC5300
> - Shuttle SK22G2 (VIA K8M890CE), AMD dual Core X2 5200 and 4Go of RAM
> Any comments, feedback on those ?

I've only tested HVM support on dual-core Xeon (50x0 or 51x0), so I can't
comment on AMD CPUs. Just make sure that the motherboard also supports
the virtualisation extentions (the CPU isn't enough, AFAIK).

> 
> My current /xen installation (NetBSD 4.0_BETA2 and xenkernel30-3.0.3) does
> not support POWERNOW. Are POWERNOW and/or SPEEDSTEP supported on /xen for
> the AMD X2 or Intel Core2Duo ?

AFAIK no. This would be the hypervisror's job, but this would probably need
cooperations of the domains.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--