Microsoft will be removing the hardware virtualisation extensions requirement with the next update of XP mode. The updates are available here:
Intel’s mechanism is know as VT-x while AMD’s is called AMD-V.
There are pros and cons with this change:
- con – hardware virt extensions allow a CPU to process certain virt instructions ( especially context changes ) much quicker than CPUs without these extensions – using a non-hardware virt CPU is likely to drop performance, perhaps to a level that makes XP mode unusable in certain cases
- pro – Intel CPUs have had spotty support for VT-x through their ranges meaning many were confused and unsure about whether they could or couldn’t run XP mode, this no longer matters ( unless you specifically want hardware virt )
- pro – AMD CPUs from Athlon 64 and later have all had AMD-V support so there has never been confusion with these chips
While this might not make a big difference seeing as the usage of XP mode is very low, let’s wait and see what the reaction is.