Does Intel Core i3-8300 (or i3-8100) support "VMX Unrestricted Guest"?

[MeanOldTeacher]

Hello,

Because I got burned when I tried to install VMWorkstation-Pro 14 on my perfectly good 2009 vintage Intel Core i7 system I need to know for sure whether the new basic system I'm thinking of putting together will support "VMX Unrestricted Guest" and whatever else v14 requires.  I've been looking at the Intel Core i3-8300 generation 8 CPU that was launched in Q2'18 with the thought of installing it on a compatible Asus motherboard (PRIME H370M-PLUS).  From the generalization I see on the vmware website regarding system requirements for v14 it appears that it should work, but when I look at the i3-8300 (or i3-8100) specifications on the Intel site I see no mention of anything I would recognize as relating to something called "VMX Unrestricted Guest".  A lot of this type of thing is heavily couched in buzzwords as far as I'm concerned so it may actually address this issue.  The Intel CPU specifications do mention something they call "Intel Trusted Execution Technology", which these CPUs don't support, but that may mean something entirely different.  What terms might chip makers actually use to mean the same thing as "VMX Unrestricted Guest"?

If anyone knows for sure that v14 works with either the i3-8300 or i3-8100 or has any other comments I'd appreciate that information.

Thanks,

Ray

[bluefirestorm · Accepted solution]

There is no way to identify from the Intel ARK site whether the VMX Unrestricted Guest feature is available. Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) is different from VMX Unrestricted Guest.

VMX Unrestricted Guest requires Extended Page Table (EPT). But presence of EPT for Nehalem and older CPUs does not mean they have EPT. VMX Unrestricted Guest has been available starting with Westmere CPU (2010) and newer. There are a few exceptions with Pentium N and Atom CPUs launched after 2010 that does not have EPT.

I don't see a lot of vmware.log files with i3 CPUs here in this community forum. I have seen vmware.log with Sandy Bridge i3 mobile CPU and it has the VMX Unrestricted Guest feature.

vmx| I125: hostCPUID codename: Sandy Bridge

vmx| I125: hostCPUID name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2350M CPU @ 2.30GHz

vmx| I125: Common: MSR      0x485 =         0x100401e5

vmx| I125:   IA-32e mode guest                        {0,1}

vmx| I125:   Unrestricted guest                       {0,1}

MSR 0x485 bit 5 value of 1 indicates VMX Unrestricted Guest is available. In this case hexadecimal e5 = binary 1110-0101.

I have seen vmware.log with Pentium G4560 (Kaby Lake) and it has it, too.

https://ark.intel.com/compare/126688,129942

Going by the i3 Sandy Bridge mobile and the Kaby Lake Pentium, it is very likely that i3-8100 or i3-8300 CPUs has the VMX Unrestricted Guest feature.

However, there is also a small risk that if VMware Workstation 14.x does not recognise the Family/Model/Stepping of a relatively new CPU, advanced virtualisation features such as virtualised performance counters will not work. This happened with 12.5.x with Kaby Lake CPUs. But if you don't need virtualised performance counters enabled in your VM, it should be fine to go with the i3-8300 launched Q2 2018. The symptom that the Family/Model/Stepping is not recognised would be it shows codename as Pentium in the vmware.log.

vmx| I125: hostCPUID codename: Pentium Core -- Unknown codename

vmx| I125: guest vs. host CPUID guest codename: Pentium Core -- Unknown codename