H81 Pro BTC VT-d Support?

Yes the VT-d support is confusing, since Intel's own information is contradictory about this.

I wonder if VT-d support by the chipset is similar to which Intel chipsets support over clocking?

Only the 'Z' Intel chipsets officially support over clocking, but we now know how true that is given the non-Z OC feature and debacle that happened this year.

Finding VT-d support on boards that supposedly cannot support it seems to tell us that VT-d support is more dependent upon BIOS/UEFI support for VT-d, than the chipset itself.

If we check the manual of the H81 Pro BTC, we can see in the Chipset Configuration screen, there is an option to Enable or Disable VT-d:



Sorry about the H81 chipset warning, I should have looked at the board's manual, since that will tell us if VT-d is supported or not. I still think the CPU must support VT-d even if the board does, for it to be available. Note that Intel has VT-x support listed separately, so don't confuse the two.

I mainly wanted to warn about the H81 chipset apparently not supporting VT-d, since it is the chipset with the least amount of features in the 8 series, and with the most limitations on the extent of the features (only one DIMM per channel, four SATA ports total, only two SATA III, no RAID/IRST support, only two USB 3.0 ports, supports two monitors rather than three), and it is the cheapest of all the 8 series chipsets.

ASRock Expert wrote: Check this out: http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-users/2013-06/msg00083.html http://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-users/2013-07/msg00234.html

This is most confusing.. the chipsets do not support VT-d yet VT-d works on some? I'd rather not take the chance if it's such a flaky issue so I'll probably stick with the Q87M vPro unless there is some more concrete data

I might've found the solution, albeit a little more expensive: Q87M vPro. According to Intel, the Q87 chipset supports VT-d and the manual for the board suggests that it can be enabled. Do you guys think it viable?

ADeityToBehold wrote: Excellent. I've been searching for a PCI-E ridden, VT-d compatible board for a while ;)

Wait a minute! According to Intel, the H81 chipset does not support VT-d. Check the H81 specs here (scroll down to the Advanced Technologies section):

http://ark.intel.com/products/75016/Intel-DH82H81-PCH

The H81 chipset does not support any virtualization technologies according to the specs. Both the CPU and chipset must support VT-d in order for it to be available. We cannot assume VT-d will work unless both components support it.

The MBO supports it if the CPU supports it.