Meltdown/Spectre Firmware Updates Causing Reboots for Some Intel Customers

DooKey

DooKey

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Intel is currently looking into reports that some of its customers are experiencing reboots in systems that update to the latest firmware for Meltdown/Spectre mitigation. The systems affected are running Broadwell and Haswell processors. However, Intel still recommends end-users should apply the updates for both OS and hardware. Intel needs to straighten this up and the sooner the better.

We have received reports from a few customers of higher system reboots after applying firmware updates. Specifically, these systems are running Intel Broadwell and Haswell CPUs for both client and data center.
 
One of my clients is currently having a similar issue with a Skylake Pentium PC (keeps rebooting with a INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD), although this may just be a coincidence.
 
what an absolute disaster

You guys don't have to upgrade you know.

Unless your constantly on the under-belly of the internet you will be ok.
 
Looks like my Z97 was not included in MSI's round of meltdown BIOS updates. So I can't even get patched :C
 
SixFootDuo said:
what an absolute disaster

You guys don't have to upgrade you know.

Unless your constantly on the under-belly of the internet you will be ok.
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I think the use of disaster is a bit extreme here, since it's just reports of. But more importantly, who doesn't spend all their free time hanging out in the underbelly of the internet?
 
About 30 minutes after updating my Skylake machine with the MS update I started getting random loss of GPU output, could still hear everything but had to change the DP port used on my GPU to see anything. Updated to latest 1080Ti driver but still happens about once a day with no particular activity related. Thanks WInTel. All my other machines are on hold for updates.
 
Dalexx said:
I think the use of disaster is a bit extreme here, since it's just reports of. But more importantly, who doesn't spend all their free time hanging out in the underbelly of the internet?
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Random reboots, a global Issue on a grand scale effecting everything from graphic cards, mobile processors to CPU's, etc, literally hundreds of millions of processors, pulled patches, firmware updates, misinformation in the news, performance losses, class action lawsuits, millions of people with not 1, not 2 but 3 and probably more CPU flaws!? .... and it's not at the very least a disaster in your book? O-K - THEN .................

CNN and other news outlets have had experts on telling us that these flaws will end up costing the industry in the billions of dollars.

Question, do you work for Intel?

Hrmmm

Hrrmmmmmmmm .........
 
Maybe the consumer end, but Intel's not listing their Xeon E5 Haswell as EOL. I know that our main VM server hosts aren't even 2 years old yet. And we weren't buying old by any means, as if there were newer models available, we'd have had them. We max out what we can get every time.
 
jnemesh said:
This mess pretty much cements my intention to make my next CPU an AMD!
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I'm guessing unless AMD does something really really stupid... Zen2 is going to be a sales superstar, its not that far away now.
 
I still favor intel for their single core performance but really REALLY hoping AMD closes the gap with Zen+ or 2 or whatever they are about to release.

Girlfriend has the 1700 with 32gb's of ram with a 1060 6gb GTX and she loves it. We are going to get her a NVMe ssd here soonish and that will complete that build.

She will have something like 250 tabs open in chrome. She is a web developer. Solid system.
 
Well dang guess when zen2 drops I'll ditch my 6850k x99 taichi and my 64gigs and buy amd.

I get missing security flaws, lying, selling stocks.. Typical..

But breaking existing hardware to save it tips me over the edge
 
Resale value is going to suck with the bad press, people flooding the market and reduced value.
 
naib said:
These are EOL anyway so who cares
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People who still have 3+ year manufacturer warranties on Haswell/Broadwell systems. My company has a large number of systems from this era that don't have warranties run out until 2019.
 
SixFootDuo said:
I still favor intel for their single core performance but really REALLY hoping AMD closes the gap with Zen+ or 2 or whatever they are about to release.

Girlfriend has the 1700 with 32gb's of ram with a 1060 6gb GTX and she loves it. We are going to get her a NVMe ssd here soonish and that will complete that build.

She will have something like 250 tabs open in chrome. She is a web developer. Solid system.
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The difference in performance (without ridiculous overclocking involved) between AMD and Intel is minimal. 2-3 fps at 4k in real world gaming. Oh, and for EVERY OTHER task, Ryzen beats out Intel solidly.
 
jnemesh said:
The difference in performance (without ridiculous overclocking involved) between AMD and Intel is minimal. 2-3 fps at 4k in real world gaming. Oh, and for EVERY OTHER task, Ryzen beats out Intel solidly.
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There are a lot of single core oriented apps. I think intel is still showing a lead in a lot of tasks. Heavy productivity? AMD is winning from a cost point of view.

1080p content is still favored my Intel and 1080p is all the resolution you need on 99% of the monitors out there, laptop and desktop. 1440p and 4k Monitors is still in the single digits with PC users.

Yes, AMD is neck & neck with Intel @ 4K

I'll move over to AMD if I can get a 2nd Gen Zen 10 or 12 Core CPU with quad channel memory for $500. All day long.
 
Not updating my 5960x/TitanXp gaming/crypto rig however I will be looking into a new build.
 
SixFootDuo said:
I still favor intel for their single core performance
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SixFootDuo said:
There are a lot of single core oriented apps.
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The difference between Skylake, Kabylake, Coffeelake and Zen on single thread performance is small. Typically single digit on average. The big advantage Intel has right now that matters for single thread is if you're willing to deal with the heat or de-lidding you can OC their chips to ~5Ghz while Zen is stuck at ~4Ghz.

If you're not OC'ing then there is hardly a practical difference at all in performance and you should get whichever is cheaper.

You also have to factor in that the Meltdown+Spectre fixes seem to hurt Intel performance quite a bit too for some (mostly server stuff but still) work loads. That you can avoid doing the Meltdown fix at all for Zen and the Spectre fix has negligible to no impact is a big deal.
 
wyqtor said:
One of my clients is currently having a similar issue with a Skylake Pentium PC (keeps rebooting with a INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD), although this may just be a coincidence.
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Exactly what took down my intel 4820 box. Not pleased with this
 
I just read an article that said AMD ryzen is affected by all this shit too. all variants.
 
Kdawg said:
I just read an article that said AMD ryzen is affected by all this shit too. all variants.
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Not all variants, variant 1 and 2.
I take this as due diligence as they said they were affected by 1, remote chance of 2, not by 3 due to key differences. They spent the time and found it is possible to exploit variant2
 
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Kdawg said:
I just read an article that said AMD ryzen is affected by all this shit too. all variants.
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Either your article is wrong or you misread. Or you're trolling. Just in case you're not trolling:

They're not effected at all by Meltdown, 1 variant of Spectre effects them but is easily patched with no performance hit, and the other Spectre variant has "near zero risk" but some OS vendors are releasing patches for it anyways to reduce risk to zero and also has negligible performance hit.

So overall the risk and effect for AMD's Zen by these attacks is little to nothing and by default they're much safer.

For Intel the story is different and much more complex. The short version is they're effected by all attacks and the fixes can have some nasty performance hits depending on how old your chip is and what version windows you have as well as your work load. In general desktop work loads/games will incur a mid single digit performance hit while server stuff can get some rather nasty performance hits of surprisingly close to the worst case 30%.

More info here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...e-and-meltdown-patches-will-hurt-performance/
 
Lucked out by having Ivy Bridge and intel not providing any gains over the years to necessitate upgrading.
 
MrDeaf said:
Lucked out by having Ivy Bridge and intel not providing any gains over the years to necessitate upgrading.
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My 4820k is Ivy, still faced with reboot issue.

3770k box and 4770k box have managed and the smattering of Atom and I3 systems have yet to be updated just yet.
 
Z270 updated yesterday. All is well. I had 3 bios options stored on mobo so I can always recover, but glad I got that extra feature now.
 
Slade said:
Z270 updated yesterday. All is well. I had 3 bios options stored on mobo so I can always recover, but glad I got that extra feature now.
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You cant remove the microcode update once it is applied.
 
Nenu said:
You cant remove the microcode update once it is applied.
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If you can access BIOS or whatever means exist to change BIOS then yes you can.

uCode updates are volatile
 
naib said:
If you can access BIOS or whatever means exist to change BIOS then yes you can.

uCode updates are volatile
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Bad assumption by me, you are right, not sure why I thought otherwise.
:)
 
jnemesh said:
The difference in performance (without ridiculous overclocking involved) between AMD and Intel is minimal. 2-3 fps at 4k in real world gaming. Oh, and for EVERY OTHER task, Ryzen beats out Intel solidly.
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At 4K even a Piledriver can be on pair

2017-03-06-image-16.jpg


2017-03-06-image-18.jpg


but Intel beats both Piledriver and RyZen on virtually "EVERY OTHER task": It even beats an eight-core Ryzen in many content creation apps
 
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