iMac 8GB for Virtual Machines?

[bdxman]

Looking to get a new desktop and I've decided an iMac fits the bill perfectly as I believe it's the best value on the market by far. Anyway, I plan to get Fusion 3.0 here fairly soon, and will likely use Windoze7, and a distro or two or linux with it. Do you think that having 8GB of RAM would benefit enough to go for it? (It'd just order it afterward I'm sure, and install myself) I would be using both MS and Linux OS's for work, and hopefully some play if VM's will allow some decent gaming.

Also, any thoughts on getting the quad core vs the dual in terms of using VM's? Huge difference?

 

[djc6]

Looking to get a new desktop and I've decided an iMac fits the bill perfectly as I believe it's the best value on the market by far. Anyway, I plan to get Fusion 3.0 here fairly soon, and will likely use Windoze7, and a distro or two or linux with it. Do you think that having 8GB of RAM would benefit enough to go for it? (It'd just order it afterward I'm sure, and install myself) I would be using both MS and Linux OS's for work, and hopefully some play if VM's will allow some decent gaming.

Also, any thoughts on getting the quad core vs the dual in terms of using VM's? Huge difference?

I'd go for the quad-core and the 8GB of ram if you're going to be using multiple VMs simultaneously.

I have a 2.4Ghz Mid-2007 iMac w/4GB ram and a 2.53Ghz 13" MacBook Pro with 4GB of ram. I've got a number of VMs on both. I can run one VM on either machine without any issues, but if I need to have both an XP and Vista VM open at the same time, or a Server 2003 and Ubuntu VM - I start running into issues. 1 VM seems to be all either machine can handle WELL - after that the memory page outs begin.

Being able to dedicate a core each to two VMs plus having two cores left for the host OS sounds amazing

 

[BelowTheBelt]

I am no expert on Fusion M8, however I do use Parallels and I believe you will be completely safe with 8 GB Ram.

I use it on my MBP with only 2 GB Ram sometimes for the odd Windows app with no problems while running a few other things on the Mac side.

No quoting me on the Linux stuff ;-)

I think you will be okay.