Right, so right now I have Intel's 3570k (does support VT-x but not VT-d), So I am thinking in the next month or so grabbing a second hand 3770 (non k) which does support VT-d which is required to do GPU pass through and other I/O in a VM, as I plan to mess around with Linux and VM's after my exams are done. I like to do research before hand even if its a little far away from me actually doing this, so after looking at motherboard support apparently Asus z77 motherboards don't support VT-d, I checked the bios and there is an option for virtualization but is that just VT-x? And without a CPU that supports VT-d I can't test that myself.
I have the latest BIOS but I can't seem to find any details about any support of virtualization on my motherboard (Asus p8z77-v LK), so does anyone know if Asus z77 boards support VT-d? and if not I am wondering if it would be worth finding a z77 board that does and then grabbing something like a i7 3770, or just selling what I have and upgrading to something like skylake or AMD's Zen, maybe even x99 with the price of the 5820k.
The Z77 chipset does not support VT-d. All chipsets for Ivy Bridge support the virtualisation extensions VT-x though. You need a Q-chipset or the C-chipsets for servers to utilize VT-d an IOMMU.
Yeah the ivy bridge K parts don't support it, they only support VT-x. But the non K parts do support VT-d but apparently the z77 chip set itself does not.
Your best bett would indeed be selling your current mobo and cpu. Then look into something like 4790K + Z97 chipsetboard, or Skylake 6700K + Z170 chipsetboard for example. These cpu´s do support vt-d and have an igpu which you can use for your Linux host. This means that you only need one GPU.
X99 could also be a good option. However the downside of X99 is that you will need 2 gpu´s then.
I have a old 660 lying around, so that would be an option. Depends on what the prices are tho, X99 would only be about £100 more than a skylake rig. Ill check some prices for a second hand 4790k and mobo, then I wouldn't need to go by ddr4. Probably just sit around till theres a deal/sale or something.
Yeah i would indeed wait and look arround a bit. There might be some sales, or good deals comming up.
The 4790K + Z97 mobo would indeed be interesting, because you dont have to buy new ram then. Allthough there are also a very few skylake motherboards that do support DDR3 ram. But i would personaly not hurt my head on that, since DDR4 ram has realy come down in price and costs the same as DDR3 nowdays.
X99 would indeed be realy interesting 2 extra cores and 4 extra threads could realy be a benefit for virtualization. However the downside like i said, you will need 2 gpu´s and DDR4 ram then.
Yeah I can imagine the 2 extra cores and threads would be pretty beneficial. But yeah DDR4 has dropped pretty heavily, but its nice to save money that was my idea about staying with z77 and just grabbing a different cpu.
But eh we will see, for now I play the waiting game. X99 is very tempting as I seem to have a lot of sata devices so more sata ports would be nice...
It depends on the manufacturer of the motherboard. Asus has WS lineup of motherboards so of course they're not gonna give you VTd on a consumer board. lol :D Asrock or MSI or Gigabyte and so forth is a different story. But it is actually true that Z97 chipset itself doesn't explicitly support VT-d (it does support VT-x) but for example the Asrock Z97 Pro4 does have VT-d. Doesn't really say it anywhere on the product page but you have to dig a little bit deeper, see page 71 ftp://europe.asrock.com/Manual/Z97%20Pro4.pdf
Safest bet would be Skylake and any consumer chipset as all the consumer chipsets support VT-d out of the box, but do make sure the motherboard has it enabled. If it's Asus anything, be extra careful with motherboard selection!
Or Haswell-E. But still make sure the motherboard has it.