Windows Systems Performance Impacts from Spectre and Meltdown

I bet there are less than ten people on the [H] that would admit they believe the Earth is flat or that we never went to the moon. But something like this comes along and the forum becomes conspiracy theory central. :rolleyes:

Come on folks. It's a bug, a fault, design flaw. Just like the Pentium math bug from years ago, only that one was discovered within a few weeks. This one took years to discover but it is still just a bug - a serious bug but still just a bug. Intel will surely fix it in the next generation of CPUs and it and Microsoft will patch it for existing hardware. It may not be pretty with performance losses and whatnot but for the most part I doubt anyone, including most [H]er's, will notice an appreciable performance difference in most tasks. Yes you'll show the benchmarks indicating a few percentage points lower scores but honestly, is it going to be noticeable in day-to-day tasks? For home or office users probably not. Data centers are a different story and my remarks are not directed at that segment.

It is what it is. It's not a reason to upgrade unless you are on or beyond the edge of acceptable performance now with your current hardware. Anything you buy now (on Intel platform) is still going to have the bug and still going to need to be patched with potentially performance robbing code. Just deal with it. Get your patches and move on.
 
This is why you want to be careful to evaluate the risk of untrusted code for each Windows Server instance, and balance the security versus performance tradeoff for your environment.
Click to expand...

So, that's basically any code these days. If you have sensitive data, don't be an idiot and try to "risk it" for marginal performance gains.

This entire thing is really kind of a sick joke. Mitigations, if they are an option, decrease performance. This will force many to buy more of these shit CPU's.

I find it hard to believe the guys making the chips didn't realize this was possible. Performance sells. And hardware bugs sell.
 
gxp500 said:
Introducing the new Intel 9th generation cpu's! Now with pre-patch 8th generation performance! Order today!!!
Click to expand...
Can you imagine what the hardware availability is going to look like once they get that as a marketing point? (provided everyone doesn't lose interest by then)
It'll be worse than gaming's situation with crypo miners. :D
 
Is there a way to block this particular update with Windows 10? I am running an older Sandy Bridge 3930K and don't want to risk any performance hit.
 
My parents each have Q6600 and E8400 CPUs respectively. Yes, ten year old old CPUs but just fine for their basic needs, though updated and newer software does tax them more than in the beginning. These patches, if they are even released for these CPUs, will make these CPUs useless with today's software, maybe even the old stuff. Annoying. I need to understand the risks of not patching. If it is low I may just avoid patching.
 
heatlesssun said:
Pretty amazing. Considering that some or all of these flaws effect Linux, iOS, macOS, AMD & ARM CPUs, etc.
Click to expand...

You are talking about Intel and Microsoft here, ethics are never something that either company is lacking in abundance, so maybe the tinfoil hat society have a point. No substantial or evidence on AMD issues relating to spectre and meltdown, just a bunch of unqualified statements like "unclear, not sure, call me maybe, but in the end the effects are fully exhibited on all Intel systems. Maybe Intel are tired of old tech support, so they are trying to force upgrades so that coffee lake can sell some CPU's. As we know, nobody around Haswell up has really jumped ship to conlake, they may need to boost sales.
 
Lothar said:
It's all a conspiracy to get people to upgrade to newer processors. ;)
Click to expand...

More like an opportunity Microsoft is sure to not miss to get people off Windows 7.

Edit: And to be clear, I'm not saying the bugs were purposely put to get people to upgrade, that's just a silly misrepresentation. I'm saying that fact that the bug fix causes more of a slowdown on 7 than 10 is Microsoft choosing to make it that way, as a good opportunity to convince people to update.
 
Last edited:
any heavy IO intensive application will see performance impact.. the lower the latency requirement, the bigger the impact (extreme examples between 50-70%).

Try for example ramdisk and 4k IO benchmarks..
 
RedWagnum said:
I bet there are less than ten people on the [H] that would admit they believe the Earth is flat or that we never went to the moon. But something like this comes along and the forum becomes conspiracy theory central. :rolleyes:

Come on folks. It's a bug, a fault, design flaw. Just like the Pentium math bug from years ago, only that one was discovered within a few weeks. This one took years to discover but it is still just a bug - a serious bug but still just a bug. Intel will surely fix it in the next generation of CPUs and it and Microsoft will patch it for existing hardware. It may not be pretty with performance losses and whatnot but for the most part I doubt anyone, including most [H]er's, will notice an appreciable performance difference in most tasks. Yes you'll show the benchmarks indicating a few percentage points lower scores but honestly, is it going to be noticeable in day-to-day tasks? For home or office users probably not. Data centers are a different story and my remarks are not directed at that segment.

It is what it is. It's not a reason to upgrade unless you are on or beyond the edge of acceptable performance now with your current hardware. Anything you buy now (on Intel platform) is still going to have the bug and still going to need to be patched with potentially performance robbing code. Just deal with it. Get your patches and move on.
Click to expand...

>>Come on folks. It's a bug, a fault, design flaw. Just like the Pentium math bug from years ago....

Not really.

This is not a compute problem like the math bug, it's not getting wrong results during computation.
It's not even really a flaw.

The CPUs work just fine. If humans were all honest and trust worthy, none of this would be an issue.

It's definitely a security problem, but it's not a bug.

Not picking on you or trying to start anything. It's being commonly called a bug and a flaw.
It just helps to frame it properly for what it is so we can all understand the issue better.

.
 
There is no conspiracy. MS found a new way to screw us over and they're riding it all the way to the bank. I expect a nice bump to their stock price in the near future ( same for hardware manufacturers).
 
meanmodda[H] said:
There is no conspiracy. MS found a new way to screw us over and they're riding it all the way to the bank. I expect a nice bump to their stock price in the near future ( same for hardware manufacturers).
Click to expand...
I would actually buy into this tinfoil hat idea, but as it stands now it give AMD EPYC an avenue into the marketplace like never before if they handle it correctly.
 
Spartacus said:
Yep.

Super Bowl is coming up.
It would be a great time to spring a clever/funny ad and get some laughs at Intel's expense.

.
Click to expand...

The only relevance superbowl has for me is knowing it is one month away from spring training and all life returns to normal as things in the universe make sense again.
 
OrangeKhrush said:
The only relevance superbowl has for me is knowing it is one month away from spring training and all life returns to normal as things in the universe make sense again.
Click to expand...

Ditto except I have to look up all the friggen games to make sure none of them are in my area or I could get busted.
 
Can we just run without the "fix"? I don't really see the need to implement this slowdown on my personal desktop.
 
Gigus Fire said:
Can we just run without the "fix"? I don't really see the need to implement this slowdown on my personal desktop.
Click to expand...

You just said the computer equivalent of "I don't see the need to wear a condom when having sex with complete strangers."
 
kju1 said:
You just said the computer equivalent of "I don't see the need to wear a condom when having sex with complete strangers."
Click to expand...
Why would i have sex with complete strangers (run unknown executables)?
It's one thing for vms/cloud servers that are rented to have this fix attached. They're made to do that. It's another thing for me to run them on my desktop. You would think that normal anti-virus would detect these bad players and stop them from running.
 
TrailRunner said:
Wow, 1 hour and 12 comments, several of those comments about this being a ploy to force CPU upgrades on people, and not ONE comment about this being a ploy to force people to upgrade from 7 to 10.
[H], I am disappointed in you.
Click to expand...

I actually made that comment about it being a way to force people to install (cannot say upgrade) Windows 10 in another thread. Thought it would be redundant to add it here.
 
loafer87gt said:
Is there a way to block this particular update with Windows 10? I am running an older Sandy Bridge 3930K and don't want to risk any performance hit.
Click to expand...

There is a way to block it for a while:
In Windows 10's update settings, you can pause updates for up to 35 days. This is under "Windows Update" > "Advanced Options" > "Pause Updates".

It's not a solution to everything by any means, and probably not a good thing for production machines. However, for a private PC where you want to wait a little while for Microsoft to get this update straight (if they fix this patch at all, anyway), this is a good option.

In my case, on 2/11 the option expires and Windows will force a download of all updates. By that time hopefully any real issues with their fix is resolved.


Now, even when the patches are on your machine, they CAN be disabled. Here is a link that explains how:
https://www.ghacks.net/2018/01/05/f...affected-by-meltdown-spectre-vulnerabilities/

I personally have not tested this, so please read closely and perhaps create a system restore point before doing this. I have seen similar instructions on other sites, so there seems to be legitimacy around it,

Given the above, to absolutely avoid all the patches and updates and still be somewhat safe:
1. Do not upgrade your BIOS ever. My ASUS HERO IX Bios is so stable that I'm probably fine with this. The only problem is when (not if) further CPU bugs appear that need micropatches, and you want those, well then you'll also get the stuff you didn't want.
2. Use the above link to disable the Microsoft patches.
3. Use a browser that disarms all the Javascript and what-have-you attacks that make you an easy target without the firmware/OS patches. FireFox and Edge are currently those, the rest will follow.
 
Gigus Fire said:
Why would i have sex with complete strangers (run unknown executables)?
It's one thing for vms/cloud servers that are rented to have this fix attached. They're made to do that. It's another thing for me to run them on my desktop. You would think that normal anti-virus would detect these bad players and stop them from running.
Click to expand...

This is exploitable by visiting a website that uses java script even. Ever visit a new website? Thats unknown code running on your box (any scripts the browser is asked to run).
 
Spartacus said:
>>Come on folks. It's a bug, a fault, design flaw. Just like the Pentium math bug from years ago....

Not really.

This is not a compute problem like the math bug, it's not getting wrong results during computation.
It's not even really a flaw.

The CPUs work just fine. If humans were all honest and trust worthy, none of this would be an issue.

It's definitely a security problem, but it's not a bug.

Not picking on you or trying to start anything. It's being commonly called a bug and a flaw.
It just helps to frame it properly for what it is so we can all understand the issue better.

.
Click to expand...

Well if it isn't a bug, it's bad design. Or at least flawed design.

I get what you mean -- things are working exactly as intended -- but failure to foresee that one's intentions could be exploited in a way that fundamental compromises a device's basic purpose is definitely a design issue.
 
kju1 said:
This is exploitable by visiting a website that uses java script even. Ever visit a new website? Thats unknown code running on your box (any scripts the browser is asked to run).
Click to expand...
I'll find a good addon that restricts this kind of javascript of running just like the bitcoin miner blocker. You can actively modify javascript before the browser gets to interpreting it just like an ad blocker will do.
 
Just think...6 months after we buy all new secure next-gen hardware, the market will get flooded with the old hardware all over again on FS/FT and ebay, and the masses will be back to square one :D
 
I don't believe it's a flaw more likely a surveillance back door done 10 years ago at SOMEONES request. Now it's a FLAW. Righttttttt just Intel covering its butt instead of admitting it was a backdoor.... No way they didn't know about this....
 
zalazin said:
I don't believe it's a flaw more likely a surveillance back door done 10 years ago at SOMEONES request. Now it's a FLAW. Righttttttt just Intel covering its butt instead of admitting it was a backdoor.... No way they didn't know about this....
Click to expand...

Here I think you misplaced this:

71GV79NPpZL._UL1500_.jpg
 
That was a massive image of a tinfoil hat. Did it really need to be at that massive res? I mean... it's damn near actual size.
 
polonyc2 said:
Microsoft has been trying to get people to upgrade to new CPU's for years by discontinuing support on W10...now these exploits give them another reason by causing mass panic...easier to get people to upgrade by screaming about security flaws...sorry but I'm keeping my i7 980X for the foreseeable future...I don't notice any slowdowns...anyone that does it's probably a placebo effect
Click to expand...

Being a first gen, your CPU isn't even affected. The issue start from Sandy bridge onwards.
 
Araxie said:
Being a first gen, your CPU isn't even affected. The issue start from Sandy bridge onwards.
Click to expand...

Can you point me your source please? In all my research I'm showing that all CPU's from Intel for the past decade are indeed problem, possibly back 20 years. Yes even the current ones are vulnerable.

Thanks I'd love to see that info!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top