Hi there,
currently I own a i5 750 which is 4 years old. It lacks VT-d and doesn't have TXT either. As far as I know neither are requirements and my current CPU proves this, as it does run ESXi.
Anyways, I'm looking at new gear and want to go for a i5 4670K, which has no multiplier lock, but does lack VT-d, vPro, TXT compared against 4670 (with a locked multiplier).
I'm not looking to do pass-through. There's posts here of people complaining that ESXi (5.1) hangs on i5 4670K and the i7 4770K and the solution would be to get a non-K version as it supports VT-d.
I think that's inaccurate. It seems a bug in ESXi or something. It does run on a i7 3770K, which lacks these features as well, so it doesn't make sense.
Searched around quite a bit, but all I find from VMware is that it requires VT. It doesn't say whether that's VT-x (which I know is required) or VT-d. The latter seems unlikely as proven by other CPU's lacking it that do work. Can't find much on TXT either other than that you should enable it. Well that's great, but my i5 750 doesn't have it, neither do the i7 3770K's on which I've found posts of people running ESXi on it, so it would seem it's not mandatory.
HCL is of no use either, the most 'recent' i5/i7 in there are Clarkdale based ones. It seems hopelessly outdated thus.
Anyways, anyone able to clarify? And VMware, could you please be more accurate in your specs? Intel CPU's don't have VT. They might have VT-x and if they have that they might also have VT-d, they might also not... It's quite clear from this that only stating VT only causes a bunch of confusion...
TIA
PS I don't pass-through hardware to VM's, so I doubt VT-d will be of any use to me anyways.
