Completely and utterly baffled at trying to find non-broken VT-d enabled motherboards...

[criswell]

I realize that it's probably not Intel's policy to give motherboard recommendations (unless it is their own, which, honestly, I'd be okay with, if I chould just find a retailer that solda reasonable selection of Intel brand motherboards...) but I'm asking this anyway because I've spent the last four days in what can best be described as "hardware hell" and I'm about ready to go postal on someone because of it...

I'm trying to build a system for my home office which will be predominantly used for running virtualized platforms for testing/development purposes. It'll basically be Linux virtualizing other Linuxes (using KVM), the main purpose of these virtualized Linuxes is to test network applications I'm building for scalability/performance/etc. I'm wanting to run them virtualized to make them "throw-away-able", e.g., I can quickly bring up a new KVM for tests and then discard it or replace it as needed.

Obviously I need VT-x to help my KVMs run in ring 0. But since I'm testing scalability/latency, I need to reduce any other I/O performance problems associated with the KVMs due to hardware abstractions. Thus, I'm pretty sure I need VT-d as well.

If I was in a big company/organization with an actual budget I'd probably go the server mobo route (as those seem to pretty much all have VT-d these days) but since I'm doing this with my own funds, for my home office and for an Open Source project I'm running, I'm trying to be a bit more economical.

So my thought was to get an i5/i7 with VT-x support, and then try to figure out a motherboard which would have the appropriate Intel chipset for VT-d and BIOS support for both. However, after extensive searching it seems that just because a motherboard hasthe right chipset for VT-d, doesn't mean the manufacturer has it enabled or even working properly.

I'm familiar with this:http://ark.intel.com/VTList.aspx

and this:http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/CS-030922.htm

neither of which have actually helped me find a workable motherboard...

So... suggestions? Any questions or magical search terms I should be using that I am not which will somehow unlock the secrets of the VT-d in motherboards fustercluck?

I'm getting quite desperate here....

[Aubrey_W_]

Hello,

I'd recommend asking about this at the Intel Support Community:
http://communities.intel.com/community/tech

The forums there are for more general support topics, rather than just software development,so there may be someone there who is more familiar with what the various motherboard manufacturers and system integrators offer. I don't have a way to move your post from here to there, unfortunately.

I hope this information is helpful.

Best regards,

==
Aubrey W.
Intel Software Network Support