Best virtual machine software for AMD fusion series. (C-50)

Question

I am planning on installing a Windows XP vm on a AMD C-50 processor. Host OS will be windows 7 home premium.

What software should I be using? Performance is my greatest concern, as the processor isn't excessively fast.

The processor does support AMD-V.

I don't believe that VMWare supports AMD-V. Does this mean I should use something else (VirtualBox? Virtual PC?)

Use Case: I am need to run citrix vpn software provided by my employer. This software is very intrusive, and therefore will be ran inside a VM instead. I will then be remoting into my work machine using xenapp. Performance isn't all that important, but it would be nice it was as resource friendly as possible.

Ram usage is also important.

Answer 1

Current versions of VMware and VirtualBox will both take advantage of AMD-V. The Getting Started with VMware Player 4.0 document indicates the host CPU requirements. Your particular CPU may not be supported (as documentation indicates 1.3 GHz clock or greater), but that may be a documentation artifact. There's more history about early revisions of AMD's AMD-V extensions not being supported by VMware products, available in VMware KB Article 1003945, and this VMware forum thread with the interaction of a VMware employee.

However, your performance concerns (at least CPU-wise) may be misdirected. I'd expect that I/O is going to be the first thing pressured, unless you're using an SSD. Next will be RAM.

Finally, you're talking about running a VM to be a Citrix client. Client performance should effectively be a non-issue. The minimal overhead of virtualization software is going to be swamped by the guest resource usage.

Your best bet (besides "get a system that's more appropriate for your needs") is to attempt to minimize the guest's resource usage as much as possible. There's a wealth of hacking that can be done to pare an XP installation down, but if the VPN gateway does any client checks (for things like update status, AV availability, etc.) too much hacking may cause them to fail.