Based on this Performance comparision on VMware Workstation 6.5 (it is in german) , Nehalem is the 3 generation of Virtualization plattform
Vmware has although described this in the vmware world 2007 document
TA68: Performance Aspects of x86 Virtualization
Anandtech have a useful article on the current performance of AMD and Intel CPU with a section on virtualization: http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3484
For performance result in vmware I look only at vmmark and intel vcondolidate benchmark.
VMware VMMARK Results
http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html
The benchmark above by zdnet is about the Virtualization Features AMD-V versus Intel EPT.
AMD RVI Benchmark
http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=467
Conclusion: AMD RVI helps most for 64 Bit Applications. 32 Bit ?
Also a good Articel about VMwark Results and a good conclusion of old xeon
"It is clear that the Xeon 7350 is at the end of
its life: it offers a little more than 2/3 of the performance of the
best Opteron while using a lot more power."
http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3484&p=9
*The second generation: Intel's
EPT and AMD's NPT*
http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3263&p=10
Look at the figure "The enter VMM and exit VMM latency has been lowered over time with the different Xeon families."
http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3263&p=9
Waiting for Vmwark Results of Nehalem with out. If you look at the second Linpack core i7 benchmark without HT, i want to see vmware nehelem benchmark.
http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=529