So basically any Athlon, Phenom, or Opteron made since 2006. Good to know.

lol, I thought this was a lil' obvious. It seems that AMD believes that it's beneficial that everyone gets virtualization technology. Seems like AMD is more aggressive in virtualization technology than Intel is.

@ deltatux
Yes and no, or maybe AMD is just trying to capitalize less on the 'VT' flag like Intel does, you have to pay for an extreme edition cpu to get that VT flag turned on.

It is one thing to say in the abstract that "business" needs XPM for legacy apps, though in all fairness this may be true for many. But as an individual (who does not have a VT capable system) I don't have any use for this and I suspect that is the case for most (hmmm, might be a good QOTD). Either way, this is a crutch and I hope it is not exploited as a means for companies to avoid developing their product's capabilities or their staff's skills.

If you've got an AM2 CPU, other than a Sempron, you're good. Guess only pretty early AMDs get left out. Don't know why Intel made theirs so confusing.

I am kind of new to this virtualization business proposed by Windows 7, but can you not do the virtualization in software on cpus that do not support hardware vitualization? Granted, it will not be as efficient as hardware virtualization, but for the sake of having it just work can it not be done within Windows 7?

I think Intel wanted hardware virtualization to be a value added feature whereas AMD realized that it was a possibly necessary feature that should not be denied to those with lesser budgets for cpus. Just a guess.

I agree

This seems to me like a clean win for AMD. Too many Intel processors lack virtualization. I think that E7200 and E7300 are definitly among those that lack this feature for no reason.

Weird, i started typing then realized i needed to log in. When I did it submitted my comment(which wasn't finished.) Anyways, I agree with megamanx. I remember seeing feature lists for some Intel CPU's and thought hmmm no virtuallization, oh well I'll never need that feature. Problem is now I can see myself using it, as it integrates XP applications and you run them just like you would any windows 7 app.

You can use software virtualization, but you would have to manually install a host (like VMWare or VirtualPC), and then obtain a legal copy of Windows XP. You would also then be limited by the virtualization software you were using. Why Windows7 doesn't do software-only is a question for Microsoft.

Doesn't AMD also offer the better virtualization between Intel and AMD?

Intel likes to cripple their CPUs , they were always good at it and now that they have the technological superiority again they seem to be at it again.
Of course there's no real reason to not have virtualization in lower end CPUs but why not try get more money from people and sell you expensive models they wouldn't otherwise buy.
It's a shame though , a friend has some real problems at work because he had a PC with a lower end Intel CPU and he could really use the hardware virtualization support. Tough luck.

Athlon 64 X2 5000+ BE FTW!

It forces people to upgrade/purchace higher end cpus - normal marketing

Why would a $8k car have all of the flash mercedes features?

History repeats itself (sorta) ... I think AMD is like the Robin Hood character, looking out for the little people

Hardly a comparison. More like BMW has all the flash mercedes-like features for much less.

So much more simpler for the AMD users. I wish I had a AMD chip now.

I have it on both my laptop and desktop. But I already know that from playing with Virtual PC for years and looking around in the BIOS

Don't be silly, they're only looking out for the little people's wallets. They're a business, just like Intel. They just aren't separating the high end and the low end like Intel is.

Software virtualization sucks, I've tried running VMs on my Pentium M laptop, and also on my Phenom desktop with hardware virtualization enabled, there's no comparison, I can only tell that the Phenom VMs are slower if I'm benchmarking, otherwise they appear to run just as fast as native... Both machines have adequate RAM, so that's not a factor...

AMD has always been looking out for the little guy. I guess that's makes them a great choice.

When Wine has decent Direct X 9 support,
you can just use Linux with wine on any computer (on which Linux runs) with almost native performance. It makes Linux actually have a windows API where applications can run in with almost native performance, direct X 9 support is not yet available.
It's a way better solution then virtualization if the only thing you need to get some windows XP applications running. Best thing of all, it's free!

For business that depend on legacy applications, virtualization is needed and processors with virtualization support are a big deal.

Once tried hardware accelerated virtualization on a Intel Core 2 Duo
6300 @ 1.86 GHz. It ran way to slow, beyond usable.
Virtualization is more than just have or have not.
It is also about the functions that are hardware accelerated that make virtualization capable hardware good or not usable.
(e.g.: memory management, nested virtualization support, ...)

It would be interesting to see a benchmark, with all the processors.
With hardware accelerated virtualization on and off.
Compared with native Windows XP and to finish Linux + Wine.

What is Linux? It's an OS like windows or Mac OS X,
subdivided into compatible distributions.

What is wine? Is a slightly more complicated question to answer:

So is VMware Server/Player, and most other virtualisation software. It also works far more often than Wine which can fix and then break program compatibility with every new release. Wine is not the answer, native Linux software is.

So...my old Socket 939 Athlon 64 X2 4400+ is not supported?

so i can forget about my athlon XP processor..

I had hoped they would say something from 'this type of processor' onwards

The annoying problem that I have is that I have an AMD processor that supports Virtualization, but the MOTHERBOARD does not. I've just recently discovered this. It's a Gigabyte board that is only around 6 months old, and while it lists Virtualization support in the Bios, it apparently is either a bios option unused with that board, or it is some other type of support protocol that is different from AMD's Hyper-V.

I'm in the process of sending-in some e-mails to Gigabyte to see if there might be a Bios update for the board that might enable the necessary Virtualization support needed (as the AMD Utility seems to suggest is possible), but I am not very hopeful.

Okay there you'ce got a point.
But it will work faster than other virtualization because it's adding windows api and stuff to Linux. And it is NOT virtualization, it's a step further and because of that more prone to errors.

It could be a solution for people wanting to run a few programs, updating wine until it works and then stick with that version.
It's more efficient than virtualization, that's it's strength.
And the project is still relatively young.

Why would the little people need the big peoples features?