Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD X2 ?

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 ?

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 ?

TIA,
    Jo

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 <bouyerantioche.eu.org>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la
difference
--