Upgrade or wait until new CPUs address the spectre and meltdown?

Shoop

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 12, 2006
Messages
196
Currently have an i7 2600k and have been thinking of finally upgrading but with the recent news about current processors should I just wait until Intel changes the architecture to fix the spectre and meltdown bugs?
 
If your building a data center, I'd consider waiting.

If your building a personal PC, the bugs are no reason to wait.

My opinion about it anyway
I would wait. Personally I think this whole thing sucks and I wouldn't be buying any new cpu's right now. Let Intel sort this bullshit out. Your gonna pay top dollar for a couple that out of the box nets less performance than it should. I don't care if gaming is barely touched. If it's less it's less. IMO if your gonna get less you should pay less. In either case I wait until the next gen comes out and fixes this bullshit.
 
I have a Haswell-E CPU, which is firmly in the 'Old'/double-digit slowdown bucket according to Microsoft.

That said, I use that PC mostly for gaming, and somehow I don't picture MS doing [H]-style frame time analysis or even looking at gaming that closely in general. We'll see when they publish their benchmarks or when enthusiast sites start to benchmark the updates just how much gaming is affected.

I'd wait, because there's no telling how much your particular workload is affected until the benchmarks are published, and there's no telling whether Intel has enough time to patch Cascade Lake or whatever comes after Coffee Lake. If they don't, then you're waiting until 2019.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Savoy
like this
Wait. We don't even know the exact impact on the older chips like SB. If you have an itch to upgrade, go for Ryzen or Ryzen+. I'm not worried about patching my personal gaming system which still has a 3970X and Win7. The entire system is built just for gaming and not only am I smart with where I go and what I do on the internet, i keep absolutely nothing of value on my gaming system so the worst thing that could happen is a reformat and it's been years since had to do that.
 
I'm with these guys. I JUST finished building up my 8700k and delidded it. (grrr...)

If you absolutely must build a system right now I'd go Ryzen or Threadripper.

Otherwise, wait. 1 of the exploits still affects everything including AMD. It's just that the one with the biggest performance hit doesn't apply to AMD. And that's just as of this moment. Who knows what is going to happen with this next week, or even tomorrow.
 
Currently have an i7 2600k and have been thinking of finally upgrading but with the recent news about current processors should I just wait until Intel changes the architecture to fix the spectre and meltdown bugs?

That is a long wait, the core I architecture runs through 2020, by then your 2600K will be pretty much a novel collectable, that said you will probably see a boost in upgrading to any new setup from either team.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sufu
like this
The mitigations do cause a worse performance hit to pre-Skylake chips according to Microsoft. Well worth considering if you plan to stick with Sandy Bridge.
 
You know Ryzen chips are crazy fast... And aren't affected.

But they are affected by Spectre. And crazy fast? They are most likely slower than his 2600K depending on his OC ;)

Every single OOO designed CPU without exception is hit. Intel, AMD, ARM, IBM, Fujitsu, MIPS, Samsung, Qualcomm, MediaTek etc.

If you want the latest x86 CPU without the issue you buy one of the older In Order Atoms. But not the new since they are OOO as well.
 
Last edited:
I doubt you see a performance CPU without issues of future attack vectors within the next 10 years. So how long are you going to stick to that also affected 2600K?

Every single performance CPU since Pentium Pro and K6 are affected if you exclude Itanium.
 
I doubt you see a performance CPU without issues of future attack vectors within the next 10 years. So how long are you going to stick to that also affected 2600K?

Every single performance CPU since Pentium Pro and K6 are affected if you exclude Itanium.
Dude this whole ordeal just started. I would at the very least wait a couple of months until it fleshes out a bit and we have a better understanding. What's the rush? He's lasted this long what is a little while longer? Buying anything right this minute is bad advice. Sorry.
 
Dude this whole ordeal just started. I would at the very least wait a couple of months until it fleshes out a bit and we have a better understanding. What's the rush? He's lasted this long what is a little while longer? Buying anything right this minute is bad advice. Sorry.

Bad advice? How long should he wait..and wait...and wait. There isn't coming any CPUs with a fix the next few years even if solved today.
 
But they are affected by Spectre. And crazy fast? They are most likely slower than his 2600K depending on his OC ;)

78efe6fefbd5459ac80716dc2d9fe7b407176e7ed4e5c1b467c5d6d693ae77b3.jpg
 
And your next post will be a CB score or something? ;)

why would it need to be? that is pretty obvious but if you had to go on price level all Ryzen parts in the price range of the 2600K are pretty much faster and more efficient in the everything from rendering to workstation.

amd-r5-bf1-benchmark.png


A much cheaper 1500X with identical base / turbo's is more than a handful for the old titan of gaming, both CPU's are bottlenecking the 1080ti and a 4.7ghz 2600K is not winning despite 20+% clockspeed advantage. In stock form the 1500X is clearly out there on its own.

The only time your arguement actually works out is the very old Metro bench, Metro is very single threaded so high clocks does help in that instance where the 2600K at 4.7ghz beats Ryzen.

amd-r5-mll-benchmark.png


The stock 2600K falls behind the 1500X again. Metro remains the only bench where AMD's low clocks lose out to old intel with very high clocks.

For render tests its pretty obviously a bloodbath

amd-r5-blender-benchmark.png


Stock 1500X is about the same as a 4.7ghz 2600K with the same threads, a stock 2600K is blown away showing AMD's SMT is far to strong for Sandybridge . I will leave out cinebench where a stock 1500x matches a 4.7ghz 2600K and we will leave out firestrike and other gaming synthetics where again teh 1500X is comfortably pulling ahead even in stock trim.

What this means in short is that you likely need a 4.7+ sandy i7 to match a entry level SKU off the ryzen line, in productivity every Ryzen bar the 1800X is under the 2600K's price and every CPU practically wins out by a long margin in non gaming or real world applications, the best was the recent streaming performance of Ryzen the 1600 would utterly destroy the 2600K in live streaming at 1080P
 
why would it need to be? that is pretty obvious but if you had to go on price level all Ryzen parts in the price range of the 2600K are pretty much faster and more efficient in the everything from rendering to workstation.

amd-r5-bf1-benchmark.png


A much cheaper 1500X with identical base / turbo's is more than a handful for the old titan of gaming, both CPU's are bottlenecking the 1080ti and a 4.7ghz 2600K is not winning despite 20+% clockspeed advantage. In stock form the 1500X is clearly out there on its own.

The only time your arguement actually works out is the very old Metro bench, Metro is very single threaded so high clocks does help in that instance where the 2600K at 4.7ghz beats Ryzen.

amd-r5-mll-benchmark.png


The stock 2600K falls behind the 1500X again. Metro remains the only bench where AMD's low clocks lose out to old intel with very high clocks.

For render tests its pretty obviously a bloodbath

amd-r5-blender-benchmark.png


Stock 1500X is about the same as a 4.7ghz 2600K with the same threads, a stock 2600K is blown away showing AMD's SMT is far to strong for Sandybridge . I will leave out cinebench where a stock 1500x matches a 4.7ghz 2600K and we will leave out firestrike and other gaming synthetics where again teh 1500X is comfortably pulling ahead even in stock trim.

What this means in short is that you likely need a 4.7+ sandy i7 to match a entry level SKU off the ryzen line, in productivity every Ryzen bar the 1800X is under the 2600K's price and every CPU practically wins out by a long margin in non gaming or real world applications, the best was the recent streaming performance of Ryzen the 1600 would utterly destroy the 2600K in live streaming at 1080P

You only prove my point, thanks. 1500X with 3200Mhz OCed memory and a 4Ghz OC is barely an upgrade in your selected benchmarks. What was the 2600K memory speed? :)

And Metro you are busy to excuse it beat them all.
 
You only prove my point, thanks. 1500X with 3200Mhz OCed memory and a 4Ghz OC is barely an upgrade in your selected benchmarks. What was the 2600K memory speed? :)

And Metro you are busy to excuse it beat them all.

Memory performance when general IPC is the limitation is not going to alter much, its not like memory is going to add 20 FPS upgrade, you can also notice the high clocked 4790K is doing just fine with DDR3. Lets not pretend that memory is life altering or the reason for SB just being really old now.

I don't know what you are trying to say there, though if it is what I am assuming it just points to difficulties you have reading graphs.
 
For those that are commenting "If we wait and wait and wait ...."

We all know there is no waiting when technology is concerned, if we are thinking only about speed / dollar spent.

HOWEVER, the reason I currently recommend waiting isn't for that reason. The reason I recommend waiting right now is so we can find out more about the Spectre and Meltdown flaw.

Once we know more about how far and wide this flaw is, and more importantly how bad the impact of the patches will be, then you can make a more educated buying decision. If the impact is bad, there will also likely be price cuts which is only to OP's benefit.

Again, if the OP is running AOK in his Usecases with his present setup, I would recommend waiting at least a few months for more news (and conveniently newer hardware to come out as well).
 
For those that are commenting "If we wait and wait and wait ...."

We all know there is no waiting when technology is concerned, if we are thinking only about speed / dollar spent.

HOWEVER, the reason I currently recommend waiting isn't for that reason. The reason I recommend waiting right now is so we can find out more about the Spectre and Meltdown flaw.

Once we know more about how far and wide this flaw is, and more importantly how bad the impact of the patches will be, then you can make a more educated buying decision. If the impact is bad, there will also likely be price cuts which is only to OP's benefit.

Again, if the OP is running AOK in his Usecases with his present setup, I would recommend waiting at least a few months for more news (and conveniently newer hardware to come out as well).

Pricecuts when everyone is affected isnt going to happen. This covers everything from Phones, Tablets, PCs, Servers, Mainframes and so on and every single CPU manufactor.
 
Memory performance when general IPC is the limitation is not going to alter much, its not like memory is going to add 20 FPS upgrade, you can also notice the high clocked 4790K is doing just fine with DDR3. Lets not pretend that memory is life altering or the reason for SB just being really old now.

I don't know what you are trying to say there, though if it is what I am assuming it just points to difficulties you have reading graphs.

Yes, lets not pretend Haswell doesn't have faster memory either ;)

All your bogus IPC claims went down the drain long ago.
 
Yes, lets not pretend Haswell doesn't have faster memory either ;)

All your bogus IPC claims went down the drain long ago.

It uses DDR3 also and per there test benches: "All DDR 3 systems used DDR 3 2400 kits" poof goes that explaination. The 4790K is faster than the 2600K because of its architectural advances and it has a rather high clock speed, pretty simple.

It is like Ryzen is faster than Sandy by a considerable margin and requires a really high overclock to just keep up.

Last I said was the IPC was around Haswell and that to this day has been correct, it was a certain other person that keeps getting it wildly wrong. but nice deflection.

So to sum this up with ryzen if the user wanted ryzen to start off with they are getting greater performance with lower clocks thus less power on a newer process and newer technology. Seems like a pretty big upgrade.
 
Still having the IPC debate, I see.
Also consider Intel chips clock 10-30% higher (by generation), so IPC is one thing and "max clocks" is another thing entirely. Also consider the recent impact of Meltdown/Spectre.
 
Still having the IPC debate, I see.
Also consider Intel chips clock 10-30% higher (by generation), so IPC is one thing and "max clocks" is another thing entirely. Also consider the recent impact of Meltdown/Spectre.

It wasn't even a debate, it was the usual, "know little but comment anyway" situation which was incorrect. A entry level Ryzen 1500X competes and beats a overclocked high end part (at least in its day but still remains high end due price paid for it) a 1600 and up pretty much takes care of the SB debate
 
I'd wait and see what Intel does with the fixes or wait and see what the next Ryzen chips look like in March/April.

At this point, the 2600k will last another 6 months to see how things shake out.
 
I am using a i7-4770K @4.3Ghz.. I was planning on upgrading in the next few months.. and I may still, However not until I have a better feel for what the fallout is on this..

my plan now is to hold tight for 6~mos and see what is what at that time.
 
Bad advice? How long should he wait..and wait...and wait. There isn't coming any CPUs with a fix the next few years even if solved today.
Yes dude bad advice. What's so hard to understand? This is not a normal situation. Let him wait to see how this fleshes out then make an intelligent informed decision. What, waiting a couple of more months is going to make our break him? His cpu is old as fuck anyway. Two more months makes it that much better? Yes it's bad advice imo. I never said to wait years. Don't exaggerate.
 
For those that are commenting "If we wait and wait and wait ...."

We all know there is no waiting when technology is concerned, if we are thinking only about speed / dollar spent.

HOWEVER, the reason I currently recommend waiting isn't for that reason. The reason I recommend waiting right now is so we can find out more about the Spectre and Meltdown flaw.

Once we know more about how far and wide this flaw is, and more importantly how bad the impact of the patches will be, then you can make a more educated buying decision. If the impact is bad, there will also likely be price cuts which is only to OP's benefit.

Again, if the OP is running AOK in his Usecases with his present setup, I would recommend waiting at least a few months for more news (and conveniently newer hardware to come out as well).
This exactly. This was my point. Thank you.
 
Yes dude bad advice. What's so hard to understand? This is not a normal situation. Let him wait to see how this fleshes out then make an intelligent informed decision. What, waiting a couple of more months is going to make our break him? His cpu is old as fuck anyway. Two more months makes it that much better? Yes it's bad advice imo. I never said to wait years. Don't exaggerate.

There isn´t going to be any new CPU with some sudden fixes to this for years to come.
 
There isn´t going to be any new CPU with some sudden fixes to this for years to come.
That's probably true but it doesn't change there advice being given by most people here. Most I think you will find agree with waiting a couple of months either way. What is your amazing rush? I really don't get it. Why are you in such a hurry to spend this guy's money? I'm confused.
 
That's probably true but it doesn't change there advice being given by most people here. Most I think you will find agree with waiting a couple of months either way. What is your amazing rush? I really don't get it. Why are you in such a hurry to spend this guy's money? I'm confused.

He's a well known Intel/8700k apologist. The best thing you can do is put him on ignore and carry on with your life buying whatever you see fit to buy.
 
There isn´t going to be any new CPU with some sudden fixes to this for years to come.
I'll be shocked if the next generation of CPUs from Intel don't have this sorted. Who knows how long they've know about it. At the very least we know they've known that OTHER people have known about this flaw for at least the past 5-6 months... looking back, I'm guessing THIS and not threadripper was the culprit behind the recent trashfire releases. I thought it'd be hard to out-do the kabylake-x release, but if intel drops z390 with cpus still impacted by this flaw... damn.

Unless you have some affiliation with intel that grants you access to info the rest of us don't have that is... (And it would certainly explain some of your opinions.)
 
I'll be shocked if the next generation of CPUs from Intel don't have this sorted. Who knows how long they've know about it. At the very least we know they've known that OTHER people have known about this flaw for at least the past 5-6 months... looking back, I'm guessing THIS and not threadripper was the culprit behind the recent trashfire releases. I thought it'd be hard to out-do the kabylake-x release, but if intel drops z390 with cpus still impacted by this flaw... damn.

Unless you have some affiliation with intel that grants you access to info the rest of us don't have that is... (And it would certainly explain some of your opinions.)

All the next CPUs will be OOO designs. And its these that are flawed by design. Spectre is an entirely new attack vector that is just barely scratched on the surface. If you want a CPU without the issue, get an much slower In Order design CPU.
 
I figured a way to bypass the patch and install the rest of Intel security' patches manually. System feels back to normal and fast again. I lived past the s2k issue with the clocks in 1999. I lived without issues with my firewall off for a decade ,I've even servived all this malware while torrenting more than a decade. This is just one if those times you can't have the media push you into a corner. This has been a 20 year bug I'm sure the browser and antivirus community is going to do a way better job than this microsoft patch is. If I get hit with something I will let the community know but moving forward let me enjoy the new pc ive built without using this crap microcode that screwed my memory my nvme ssd speed and more. And as for the patch it's a Microsoft and Intel joke. Don't tell me you have a room full of the smartest people on earth and you cant work around this. This is just my opinion on the matter.
 
No need to make another thread so ill just ask here as i havent been much up to date with this.

So i understand the whole thing more or less and everyone will be releasing something like bios staff ,microcodes and the current windows patches that tend to lose you some worckload performance.

I am biulding a x299 workstation and realy dont want to compromise stuff.Cant i just opt not to install anything like the microsoft patch ,microcodes and just keep my antivirus and internet browser updated and call it a day??
 
there is a mini application you can download which can ignore certain windows updates, ill try post the it on link here later. basically you can set to ignore it and it will dupe Windows to see it as invisible.
 
I am sitting on my 3770K until ice lake. I would be similarly happy if said 3770K was a 2600K. youre good to go! Maybe these issues will push prices down too. Anything can happen. With ice lake rumored at 8c/16t, unless you need the performance immediately due to significant lag (I doubt it with a 2600K), you are solid to wait!
 
Back
Top