The idea that you need a Xeon for VM "stability" and "decent speed" is one of the more asinine things I've ever heard. There's no real advantage to a Xeon over an i5 for 99% of developer workload.
A Bit error in calculation may cause problem in CAD/CAM, Finance or Virtual Machines. Intel does not allow ECC memory with i5 or i7; It is the idea for environments where cannot tolerate bit errors. You will see some odd errors in your VMs after running(rendering) heavily for as little as few hours.
Other examples is model rendering. Intel only allowed 32G memory for i5/i7 CPUs and you need to leave certain free memory while doing that. It end up you can only use 2-3 core instead 12 core which makes your process slower.
A Bit error in calculation may cause problem in CAD/CAM, Finance or Virtual Machines. Intel does not allow ECC memory with i5 or i7; It is the idea for environments where cannot tolerate bit errors. You will see some odd errors in your VMs after running(rendering) heavily for as little as few hours.
Other examples is model rendering. Intel only allowed 32G memory for i5/i7 CPUs and you need to leave certain free memory while doing that. It end up you can only use 2-3 core instead 12 core which makes your process slower.