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Here is the summary of what we have found so far:
- With Windows 10 on newer silicon (2016-era PCs with Skylake, Kabylake or newer CPU), benchmarks show single-digit slowdowns, but we don’t expect most users to notice a change because these percentages are reflected in milliseconds.
- With Windows 10 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), some benchmarks show more significant slowdowns, and we expect that some users will notice a decrease in system performance.
- With Windows 8 and Windows 7 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), we expect most users to notice a decrease in system performance.
- Windows Server on any silicon, especially in any IO-intensive application, shows a more significant performance impact when you enable the mitigations to isolate untrusted code within a Windows Server instance. 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.
Windows 7 And 8
Microsoft said that it expects most users of Windows 7 and 8 to see a significant drop in performance on their computers after the Meltdown and Spectre patches are applied.
Microsoft explained that the reason why Windows 7 and 8 are more impacted than Windows 10 is because the two use older kernels which perform more transitions between the kernel-mode and the user-mode. The Meltdown and Spectre patches add security checks in-between those transitions, which explains why the performance degradation is larger on these operating systems.
Microsoft didn’t say whether or not it would be possible to upgrade Windows 7 and 8 to the newer kernel. Presumably, it would take too much work to fix operating systems that are supposed to be discontinued in a few years anyway.
Most of the performance loss appears to be on storage related stuff. I don't know that I'd notice it unless I was transferring lots of large files recently.
Did notice and remember about the defects listed in this document? http://support.amd.com/TechDocs/53072_Rev_Guide_16h_Models_30h-3Fh.pdfIf you paid $300+ for a CPU with design defects, you'll notice and you won't forget either.
Did notice and remember about the defects listed in this document? http://support.amd.com/TechDocs/53072_Rev_Guide_16h_Models_30h-3Fh.pdf
or how about the ones listed in this one? https://www.mouser.com/pdfdocs/desktop-6th-gen-core-family-spec-update.pdf
All CPUs have defects.
If you paid $300+ for a CPU with design defects, you'll notice and you won't forget either.
Did notice and remember about the defects listed in this document? http://support.amd.com/TechDocs/53072_Rev_Guide_16h_Models_30h-3Fh.pdf
or how about the ones listed in this one? https://www.mouser.com/pdfdocs/desktop-6th-gen-core-family-spec-update.pdf
All CPUs have defects.
Difference between a defect which has to be patched before it works fully and a defect that robs you of performance forever that you paid for.
"I replaced my Kaby Lake with an old FX-8350 because of Meltdown" sounds like something a troll would say.Thank you. I have 3 Skylakes and 1 Kabylake that I'm about to replace as soon as Ryzen APU is out. I won't even bother with the "patches". I even pressed my AMD FX-8350 back into service, feels nice & toasty right about now, lol. Also, I never liked the stupid Intel mobo pins that bend if you just breathe on them.
"I replaced my Kaby Lake with an old FX-8350 because of Meltdown" sounds like something a troll would say.
Go post that on /r/AMD and enjoy 10k upvotes.
I don't see many people remembering the TLB bug in AMD processors from years ago that would lock up the CPU. That's a pretty serious loss of performance right there. And the immediate fix for it had some overall performance penalties too.
At least the defect in this case doesn't rob you of performance. Only the current fixes for it do. Time will tell if that improves, though.
Agreed. Not in a hurry to get all butthurt until I've seen the definitive decreases in performance. I'm not happy to lose any performance but then again who is?
It might be a stupid question but are consoles plagued by the same bug ( ex xbone and PS4 )?
Thank you. I have 3 Skylakes and 1 Kabylake that I'm about to replace as soon as Ryzen APU is out. I won't even bother with the "patches". I even pressed my AMD FX-8350 back into service, feels nice & toasty right about now, lol. Also, I never liked the stupid Intel mobo pins that bend if you just breathe on them.
It might be a stupid question but are consoles plagued by the same bug ( ex xbone and PS4 )?
Then you can enjoy Zen with its Spectre issues, Crashes on Authenticode, lower performance and so on
what spectre issues can they expect? most issues start at the aptly named "meltdown" when full security is passed and you can literally be hacked without protection at that point. spectre has never been the overall concern, spectre 2 seems the warning signs for near full break in but they wouldn't know that either, that is a privilege for us Intel PCMR. I am really just concerned about someone knowing what my H password is.
Spectre is the absolute most dangerous since its an entirely new attack vector where the surface is just barely scratched. And this could kill OOO designs for good. Personally I can´t see OOO designs fixing this. So we are back to In Order designs and compiler scheduling.
reading the notes the only thing about spectre that remotely seems bad is that it is impossible to eradicate on OOO type designs but, it can be mitigated with regular OS updates. Meltdown gets its name because it is the effect of full security breaks allowing the attacker to have access to anything, it is more the "break point" of spectre intrusions.
The current migrations is only against the now known issues. There will be more in the future. It is now a new research field, never touched before.
Meltdown exploits side effects of out-of-order execution on modern processors to read arbitrary kernel-memory locations including personal data and passwords. Out-of-order execution is an indispensable performance feature and present in a wide range of modern processors. The attack is independent of the operating system, and it does not rely on any software vulnerabilities. Meltdown breaks all security assumptions given by address space isolation as well as paravirtualized environments and, thus, every security mechanism building upon this foundation. On affected systems, Meltdown enables an adversary to read memory of other processes or virtual machines in the cloud without any permissions or privileges, affecting millions of customers and virtually every user of a personal computer.
that is true, now people are aware so hopefully this becomes a point of prime interest.
Meltdown is a very bad issue, the bold being the major difference, it is a a full on system break that results in corporate losses since it is normally the Google system that is hacked and the attacker has access to the full user database and can steal information from anyone on there. Spectre remains more personal and relies on application vulnerability indicating that the application coders can still improve their security. Meltdown affects everything without discern, cloud/remote, virtual, servers, and by inference any device that accesses such point ie: mobile. I think spectre is being made to be the issue instead of facing the bigger problem, #3 is the IT levels of bad.
Before the patch, older version of Win 10, 6700K system with 1gb Intel 600p NVME:
...
Some performance loss but I really have not noticed it.
I'm not seeing a BIOS update for that board (https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z170N-Gaming-5-rev-10#support-dl), so safe to assume these benchmarks are without the updated microcode?
I am shocked that Shintai says Spectre is the problem and not Meltdown.
Shocked I say. Nothing to do with the Intel specific performance drop.
NOTHING AT ALL
Microcode doesn't have to be embedded in the BIOS to be updated. It can be done by the OS during boot.
Yes that is correct unless Windows updated the microcode.I'm not seeing a BIOS update for that board (https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z170N-Gaming-5-rev-10#support-dl), so safe to assume these benchmarks are without the updated microcode?
Unless Microsoft changes the cyclus the next Windows microcode change will be the next major Win10 upgrade. So 3-4 months or whatever it is. Linux and unix variants should already be done.
What makes you think they would wait an entire product cycle to release a security patch?
https://www.theverge.com/platform/a...tre-disclosure-embargo-google-microsoft-linux
The Verge published a article relating to how Meltdown and Spectre we're kept secret for months before the dam bursted. Quite interesting, especially the tidbit about CERT. If anyone remembers, they issued a recommendation to "Replace all affected CPUs" for Meltdown and Spectre, something that was remarked upon a lot with bemusement by many.
Thank you. I have 3 Skylakes and 1 Kabylake that I'm about to replace as soon as Ryzen APU is out. I won't even bother with the "patches".