I have a socket 754 Sempron64 3400+ processor with 256kb cache... I am not sure which core it is and not sure how to check.
I need to know if my processor has vmx or svm features to be able to use hardware KVM.
The following line checks the above cpu features:
And I get no output.
I don't know whether my kernel was not compiled to use the features or what... If I need to compile the kernel to support those features, thats fine but I need to know what processor family to choose in "make xconfig"
Currently I am running 2.6.20.6.
Would someone post the output they get with the above line? I just wanna know if its just my system or my processor really doesn't have virtualization features.

There's nothing to compile in the kernel; these are CPU hardware flags returned by the cpuid instruction. You can just 'less /proc/cpuinfo'. There's not much there. The feature you're looking for on an AMD is svm (secure virtual machine).

You don't need the function to use virtual machines; it provides a performance benefit. You can, for example, use the (free) VMWare Server software to run Windows XP in a virtual guest without the hardware assist. Even without the assist, it runs very well.

That would be solely your opinion.
As for my the software virtualization is way too slow, even for my fairly recent and up-to-date machine.
This is quite a shocker actually... I thought that my CPU wasn't that old...

That would be my experience.

KVM runs much slower than VMWare; the two are not comparable. I can run WinXP in a VMWare virtual machine on my 6 year old laptop (1.7GHz P4M) at near native speed. That is, fast enough that I don't experience any slowdown or sluggishness.

Since VMWare Server is free, give it a try. You will be surprised.

You mean software or hardware KVM?
Keep in mind, KVM falls back to software if there is no hardware support.
Software KVM is indeed quite slow.
I'll try VMWare though...

Virtual Box is another good program to try for this. www.virtualbox.org
I use it myself with XP and it runs much better then I had expected it.

As for the processor, you should be able to take a look in the bios, it should have an option to activate the virtualisation feature, that way you'll also know if you have it or not, and then you need to either compile the kernel (above 2.6.20) and checking the virtualisation feature, or just install the module, there are instructions on the kvm website.

In both cases, you (and I) will be using software virtualization, since the hardware assist is not available on either of our processors.