Best CPU Chart to reference for VM hardware

My honest opinion is to go for any quad core. Don't get any dual core. Especially no single core processors. As virtualization software will simply tax a single processor core to it's knees.

What will your VMs be used for? What VMware product will you be using?

In a production environment, VMware recommend that your systems have as many or more cores than the number of VMs, but I find that the main performance bottleneck often is disk I/O. For testing purposes, even a P4 541 works fine if you only run a couple VMs that are not too busy. My server with the Q6600 is obviously faster than the one with the 541, but the difference isn't as large as one might expect. The main benefit of the Q6600 is that it runs 64-bit VMs and the CPU utilization never reaches 100%. Depending on what your VMs will be used for, you might consider spending a bit less on the CPU and a lot more on very fast hard disks and dedicate one per VM (or use high performance disk arrays). Also consider buying enough memory to prevent swapping.

Failed to mention I run a stripe of 80gb 7200rpm hard drives.

Either an Intel or an AMD Quad will work. I chose an Intel Q6600 and an Asus P5Q Deluxe because it supports up to 16 GB of memory (though I might never need that much memory) and it is a stable motherboard. I'm running Windows Server 2008 64-bit and VMware Server 2.0. Since you will run VMware Server, what Windows Server version will you load on that system?

A quad will do well.

any vmware (client/server) software died on my system completely. q6600 w/ 3gb of RAM. ive checked their forums out to no avail. interestingly though i've seen someone having the same problem like me, thing is he had an AMD machine to compare it too. he was able to install it on the amd, but not on the q6600. my gut feel tells me that it has something to do with my cpu.

Stehlen, I agree with your CPU and memory selection, but I'm not so sure that I'd use that motherboard. Have you considered using the newer GIGABYTE GA-MA790GP-DS4H AM2+/AM2 that supports RAID 5?

wh3resmycar, can you create a new thread and post more info about your setup, e.g., motherboard, host O/S and version of VMware? The issue most likely isn't with your CPU.

Can you provide the info again?

Well, I got the parts in and have everything built. I've been up and running for a couple weeks now and everything is great. I did end up dumping Server 2008 for Vista Ultimate though, I got irritated when I could load all my software on the server os. Anyway, I appreciate all the feedback and advice.

Thanks!
Stehlen

No. Just VMPlayer. I use the convertor to create vm's from machines that I'm dealing with. I've been looking at buying the workstation, just haven't yet. Any signifcant preformance reason to use it? So far the convertor and vmplayer have covered my needs.