[Tech/PC] VirtualBox, Windows 7 and a new CPU

As I've done from time to time, this blog serves as a bit of a bench-notes of what I did.  However, maybe someone else hits the same problem, and finds my blog via search.

About a month back, the new nVidia 2080 Ti card was announced.  I decided to hit up eBay to see if anyone was selling off a 1080 Ti, and I was not disappointed in the price drops.  So, I upgraded my graphics to the 1080 Ti.

Similarly, Intel just dropped the new 8th Generation of Core i7 processors.  Last weekend, I upgraded my system from a Core i7-6700k CPU to a newer i7-7700k.  Now that the 8th gen 8700k is out, the 7700k became more affordable AND my existing motherboard already supports it.

I was hoping it would be more noticeable in actual use.  My benchmarks are slightly better as I expected.  I have - though - life extended this another year or two into the future.

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VirtualBox & Windows 7 (which I run for work reasons)

When I started my Windows 7 virtual machine, I got a notification from the Operating System that some Windows Updates would stop being delivered because Windows 7 doesn't support my CPU.  Knowing that VMs can fudge this data, I went searching.  After pages and pages of VERY complex commands, I found a comment from 2010 pointing at experimental "Processor Templates".  With all VirtualBox components shut down, I ran the following:

cd '\Program Files\Oracle VirtualBox'
.\VBoxManage.exe modifyvm "Win7 x64" --cpu-profile "Intel Core i7-6700K"

Restarted the VM and everything is happy again.

NOTE:

VBoxManage modifyvm "<vm name>" --cpu-profile "Intel Xeon X5482 3.20GHz"
VBoxManage modifyvm "<vm name>" --cpu-profile "Intel Core i7-2635QM"
VBoxManage modifyvm "<vm name>" --cpu-profile "Intel Core i7-3960X"
VBoxManage modifyvm "<vm name>" --cpu-profile "Intel Core i5-3570"
VBoxManage modifyvm "<vm name>" --cpu-profile "Intel Core i7-5600U"
VBoxManage modifyvm "<vm name>" --cpu-profile "Intel Core i7-6700K"

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Current PC Spec