If your old Abaqus was built with ifort 11.x, the final ifort 11.1 release should be fully in compliance with the vendor's testing done back then. Chances are that a newer release of ifort will work as well (possibly better, if you run a Windows version which didn't exist back then). You must choose a Visual Studio version compatible with the ifort and Windows version.
Evidently, if you are willing to keep your Abaqus license in effect, the software vendor's advice is more reliable than what you find elsewhere (including here).
