Is vSphere compatibility matrix wrong about my CPU?

[crstansbury1]

I am looking at purchasing a server for a home ESXi lab, and I want to install ESXi 7.0.x

I looked at the compatibility matrix for the CPU I am looking at, which is a Xeon E5-2683 V4. That is a 16 core with 32 thread CPU. When I take a look at the compatibility matrix, VMware is saying that is a 24C/48t (see screenshot) CPU. At the end of the day, it looks like CPUs in this family are compatible with 7.0 U3, but I was just wondering why VMware doesn't say the same thing as what the CPU actually is. The only thing I could think of is if there are CPU's in that series that are up to 24c/48t and VMware is just using the max value for the series.

Thanks,

Craig

[sjesse]

It all comes down to testing ,if its not in the matrix its not "supported", but it may work. That includes the core counts in the matrix, they list the family which cover many different ones. I have a few Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2660 v3 20 core processors and they still work and just started throwing cpu deprecated messages, but still work with 7 update 2,but it all depends.

[a_p_]

>>> The only thing I could think of is if there are CPU's in that series that are up to 24c/48t and VMware is just using the max value for the series.

That's likely it, although the Intel site shows 22 cores as the maximum.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/series/91287/intel-xeon-processor-e5-v4-family.html

André