The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    ASUS laptops that support hardware virtualization

    Discussion in 'Asus' started by mahmood, Jun 17, 2011.

  1. mahmood

    mahmood Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    94
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Hi
    I am looking for ASUS notebook that support virtualization in the bios. All new CPUs support hardware virtualization but many notebook BIOS has not such option.

    Does U series has such feature?
     
    mahmood, Jun 17, 2011
    #1
  2. pjc123

    pjc123 Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    1
    Messages:
    201
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    31
    This statement is not entirely true. Practically all new ultraportable Sandy Bridge laptops, regardless of manufacturer, do not support Intel Virtualization for Directed I/O (VT-d), because they use the i5 2410m processor. However, this processor does support Intel Virtualization Technology (VT-x). Any i5 above this, including i7 processors, include both virtualization technologies. There are also other features missing in the i5 2410m processor.


    Per the Intel site, VT-d, at the time of this writing (June 25th, 2009) , includes four key capabilities

    1. I/O device assignment. This feature allows an administrator to assign I/O devices to VMs in any desired configuration.

    2. DMA remapping. Supports address translations for device DMA data transfers.

    3. Interrupt remapping. Provides VM routing and isolation of device interrupts.

    4. Reliability features. Reports and records system software DMA and interrupt errors that may otherwise corrupt memory of impact VM isolation.
     
    pjc123, Jun 17, 2011
    #2
  3. mahmood

    mahmood Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    94
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Ok, then how about ASUS laptops?
     
    mahmood, Jun 17, 2011
    #3
  4. ALLurGroceries

    ALLurGroceries  Vegan Vermin Super Moderator

    Reputations:
    15,730
    Messages:
    7,146
    Likes Received:
    2,343
    Trophy Points:
    331
    It is not a question of whether a laptop brand supports it. Find the specifications of the model you are looking at and look at what CPU it comes with. Then look up the CPU on the intel site and look at its feature set.
     
    ALLurGroceries, Jun 17, 2011
    #4
  5. mahmood

    mahmood Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    94
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    For example A42F accepts Intel® Core™ i5 520M/540M Processor

    From wikipedia both 520 and 540 supports vt-x and vt-d
    The question is does *bios* have such option to turn on/off hardware virtualization?

    See this post please
     
    mahmood, Jun 17, 2011
    #5
  6. ALLurGroceries

    ALLurGroceries  Vegan Vermin Super Moderator

    Reputations:
    15,730
    Messages:
    7,146
    Likes Received:
    2,343
    Trophy Points:
    331
    Most new machines that have support for VT-x or VT-d, especially sandy bridge ones, enable it by default. Some machines let you toggle it off, others do not.
     
    ALLurGroceries, Jun 17, 2011
    #6
  7. sarge_

    sarge_ Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    288
    Messages:
    896
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    31
    Note that the i7-2630qm does not support VT-d.
    i7-2720qm and higher do.
     
    sarge_, Jun 17, 2011
    #7
  8. pjc123

    pjc123 Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    1
    Messages:
    201
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    31
    Oops, I stand corrected. My statement only holds true for the i7 series that end with an "m" (2 cores / 4 threads), not for the "qm" and "qe" series (4 cores / 8 threads).
     
    pjc123, Jun 17, 2011
    #8