What are the Hardware Requirements for Running Virtual Machines?

[rasnam]

I owe an Acer Aspire 4520, 4 GB of RAM, AMD Turion 64 x2, and Windows 7 PRO 64 bit. Games do not fancy me. I am presently working on a few certifications . I acquire each and every the materials I require to assist me get my certifications inclusive to the the OS's that I presently have installed on my Acer making use of VMWare workstation. Each thing functions amazing until I need to run more than three VM's. CPU and RAM goes between 89 and 99% and stays there until I kill one or two VM's. It is irritating as I many a times require more than 3 running at a time. What would you recommend? Motherboard that supports up to 16 GB of RAM or would 8 be just ok?

[Mindstorm]

The blockage here is the cpu and chipset resident in your laptop.’ Essentially what you need as I judge you've figured out yourself previously is additional power. I would advocate a workstation to be fair considering the amount of VM's you desire to run in corresponding, however as these can charge the earth a desktop build should suffice. I will recommend DDR3 1333mhz ram. Corsair XMS3 is very good value for currency. As the X58 chipset runs triple channel you would require 6x2gb dimms of the ram.

[Erubiel]

I would advise an I7 Intel processor, a quad in this case as the 6 cores are idiotically luxurious. A 950 would be your unsurpassed bet. These cpu's can run 4 physical threads and 4 virtual at the same time . This, I consider will do you nicely. X58 motherboard. As for a motherboard the Gigabyte GA-X58-USB3 is a outstanding piece of kit and also about the cheapest X58 mobo on the market.. I would also be looking at 12gb ram. I would not be anxious so much about the velocity of the ram considering the quoted usage.

[Yitzchak909]

You could pay for 3x4gb dims nevertheless these are still not very good quality value for money compared to the 2gb dimms and won't be until 8gb dimms become more extensively obtainable. If you necessitate the machine now this is what I advocate even though if you can hang around for some time before buying the new-fangled, fixed, Sandy Bridge motherboards should be on the marketplace. In which case I would give an opinion the I5 2500 cpu from Intel.

[Algonkin]

Although worth pointing out that s1155 ("Sandy Bridge") chipsets and CPUs are a exchange for s1156 and not s1366 (Which will keep continuing as the high-end socket by the time late Q3 when s2011 will be released) - there is no requirement to wait for a Sandy Bridge system. The problem which has come up is a long-term defect available in a minute number of chipsets to the consumer, motherboards