Microsoft Meltdown/Spectre Patch May Bork Athlon Systems

pgaster said:
This morning my coworker just asked me to look at his computer. His wife says it's too slow and has problems. I, being a dumbass, said yes. I'm pretty sure it's an older AMD Athlon cpu of some kind. Shit.
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that isn't a "shit" that's an opportunity in disguise.
 
bugleyman said:
Anyone rocking hardware that old would probably be better off using Linux. Even so, since the hardware is still supported, the OS shouldn't just bomb. Bad Microsoft!
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Funny you should say that.... on a 486, still supported :)

http://yeokhengmeng.com/2018/01/make-the-486-great-again/

What is the oldest x86 processor that is still supported by a modern Linux kernel in present time?

I asked the above quiz question during the Geekcamp tech conference in Nov 2017 during my emcee role. The theoretical answer as you can glean from the title of this post is the 486 which was first released in 1989. I determined that fact from this article where support for the 386 was dropped in Dec 2012.

To get you interested, here is the result of my effort.
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Old hardware is not irrelevant harware. Just got a cheap ssd for an old atlhon x2 5xxx AM3 board and about to drop win 10 on it. Its for my gf's mom which only uses for web browsing. Should be fine.

Thanks for the heads up on the issue!
 
nysmo said:
Why should Microsoft have to cater to the lowest common denominator? Fuck those systems, just because it runs doesnt mean it is entitled to remain compatible with modern software. System is EOL, time to upgrade, or dont patch it anymore.
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Because they want to make money that's why.

So let's say that you have an athlon x2 running win10 (slowly, but running...) and windows auto updates and now your system doesn't run. The alternative is a security hole.

Here's the problem: if they don't fix this it is false advertising. Here's the system requirements: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/windows-10-specifications#system-specifications
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/windows-10-specifications#system-specifications
Sure, they could change this with proper notification. That isn't the case here.

Also, they wanted win 10 to run on the widest range of devices as possible - this is simple business sense.

In short, they will fix this because they have to.
 
U-238 said:
Microsoft just needs to adjust their minimum system requirements and do what games have been doing for a while now. Instead of saying "you need a 2.4Ghz Dual Core" they say they need an Intel Core i3 4130 or AMD FX-6300 or above. Then, when each "Feature Update" rolls around they publish an updated minimum spec. Those who no longer meet it don't get the upgrade and will continue to receive updates on their current build until it goes EOL at which point they'll either have to upgrade or run un-patched. May not be the most pleasant thing in the world but at some point we have to accept that technology is still accelerating at a ridiculous pace, even if the 11 year old Core2Duo or AthlonXP still "work", they are still 11 years old and it's time to put them to bed.

(Now, what to do and how to recycle all of that old hardware is another subject entirely and one that seriously needs to be answered ASAP because, for all the hand-wringers there are out there about global warming, there's a far bigger storm on the horizon when these billions of tons of e-waste starts to rear it's ugly head.)
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Might be the best idea yet
 
I don't care how old the CPU is ... if M$ let you install windows 10 with it, then borking the system with a patch isn't something that should happen and is something they should fix..

if they wanna say NO AMD Athlon's with win 11 or whatever fine.. totally fine~ish but they need to fix this for win 10 ..it is bs..
 
nysmo said:
Why should Microsoft have to cater to the lowest common denominator? Fuck those systems, just because it runs doesnt mean it is entitled to remain compatible with modern software. System is EOL, time to upgrade, or dont patch it anymore.
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You know, your right, I will let your mobile device carrier know to brick your devices because they are what I consider obsolete. I mean, did you really think that just because you spent money on something you are entitled to it or ... lol ... actually own it?

Isn't it bad enough that we can't even control what patches are being automatically applied by an OS that was, in many cases, forced onto us for hardware we own; but now we are going to have individuals like you arbitrarily determine what is and is not EOL? I've got news for you, you are surrounded by things far older that 10 years old that are still doing their jobs just fine that you are likely unknowingly benefiting from.
 
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NeghVar said:
It is that difficult for MS to configure the patch to detect an AMD CPU v. an Intel CPU? If it's an AMD, Windows should not include the patch? Is it really that difficult?

Plus, there are plenty of reasons someone could still be using an Athlon. In fact, I created a surveillance video archive which uses an old Athlon 64 FX. CentOS with SSH and Samba services installed. It needs very little processing power for it's purpose.
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Spectre affects Intel, AMD and ARM processors.
 
Wait a minute, I am confused. I thought we said Meltdown (only affecting Intel) was patch-able (but with performance penalties) and Specre (effecting everything under the sun) was completely un-patchable.

Did something change?

Other than that, I'm perfectly fine with CPU's older than 10 years old not working in the latest operating systems.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Wait a minute, I am confused. I thought we said Meltdown (only affecting Intel) was patch-able (but with performance penalties) and Specre (effecting everything under the sun) was completely un-patchable.

Did something change?

Other than that, I'm perfectly fine with CPU's older than 10 years old not working in the latest operating systems.
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Spectre variant 1 is patchable with code and microcode updates. According to AMD. There is no noticeable performance impact.
Spectre variant 2 has no known fix. But it's hard to benefit from said exploit. (Possibly because you have to be running device specific binary on the affected system for it to happen?)
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Wait a minute, I am confused. I thought we said Meltdown (only affecting Intel) was patch-able (but with performance penalties) and Specre (effecting everything under the sun) was completely un-patchable.

Did something change?

Other than that, I'm perfectly fine with CPU's older than 10 years old not working in the latest operating systems.
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Yes, computer science majors realised they were not living within a chicken-licken story. They found a way to mitigate the speculative branch prediction
 
bugleyman said:
Anyone rocking hardware that old would probably be better off using Linux. Even so, since the hardware is still supported, the OS shouldn't just bomb. Bad Microsoft!
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I tried to run linux on an old system about 10 years ago just to prove/disprove that point, and it turned out to be much worse than windows at the time. It hogged that old cpu like there was no tomorrow. But things might have changed since. But I doubt it, W10 is not much different in resource usage compared to 7 which I used at the time. It might even be slightly better optimized.
 
M76 said:
I tried to run linux on an old system about 10 years ago just to prove/disprove that point, and it turned out to be much worse than windows at the time. It hogged that old cpu like there was no tomorrow. But things might have changed since. But I doubt it, W10 is not much different in resource usage compared to 7 which I used at the time. It might even be slightly better optimized.
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<s> Obviously you used the wrong Linux distro. </s>
 
M76 said:
Have you tried browsing on an older dual core recently? It's painfully slow, especially for youtube. More complex pages with lots of active content takes long seconds to render.
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trparky said:
Those old AMD chips must be slow as a sloth stuck in molasses on a cold New York winter morning. How these people still have them I have no idea.
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You guys think that's bad? I'm going to be helping my relatives soon who are finally forced to give up their dial up connection because the desktop which had the modem in it died, and their new all in one they just bought doesn't have a modem in it. (Don't even think of suggesting ways to make it work, *It's simply not possible anymore*... :p) It's power on the computer, go grab some coffee. double click on the icon for mail, go clean the house. Click an email and wait 30 seconds or so for it to load. Spend about an hour just checking email and replying.


Dalexx said:
I have to giggle that on a hardware\overclocking enthusiast forum, we're arguing the value of 10+ year old hardware
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I think a lot of it goes to my point above. We might have newer hardware, but our old hardware tends to be given away to others, so you still end up supporting some of it. As a lot of us are in the 2600K club, that probably means our Q6600 systems are still out there. (I know I have a few) Quad cores are certainly enough to support the modern web, but I definitely would have never upgraded an althon X2 from Windows 7 myself. I'm sure you could have continued to use that for a few more years as a thin mail client. I don't even remember what the desktop was in the reply above, but IIRC it was a P4, so certainly time for that to be put to rest. I don't think I'd consider X2s relevant anymore, but any quad cores certainly are.
 
Sulphademus said:
<s> Obviously you used the wrong Linux distro. </s>
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The argument that no one really seems to grasp when blanket spouting "Use Linux". The latest desktop GUI, 3d rendered distros aren't just going to magically work well on Pentium 4s. You do gain the flexibility in that you can certainly load up something lightweight and stripped down, but not everything is going to be that way. I probably could meet that 486 minimum requirement if I just used links and pine for web and email. :p
 
M76 said:
I tried to run linux on an old system about 10 years ago just to prove/disprove that point, and it turned out to be much worse than windows at the time. It hogged that old cpu like there was no tomorrow. But things might have changed since. But I doubt it, W10 is not much different in resource usage compared to 7 which I used at the time. It might even be slightly better optimized.
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I haven't used Linux regularly in almost twenty years -- like when Red Hat was Red Hat, not RHEL -- but at that time it was a good option for older hardware.
 
I tried using Linux last year on some old PCs that I was given, and I was going to give them to some people for Kodi. But they did not run any better than they did with Windows. I think I tried Mint and maybe Ubuntu.

Someone mentioned 7 vs 10...my dad's Core 2 Duo running 7 would come to a halt on 7. Task Manager showed resources pegged at 100% or near it. I put 10 on it, and it helped quite a bit. I still got fed up and just bought him a new Kabini build, and it's plenty for him to look at Facebook, watch "How to's" on YouTube, and play PokerStars.
 
htpc_user said:
I tried using Linux last year on some old PCs that I was given, and I was going to give them to some people for Kodi. But they did not run any better than they did with Windows. I think I tried Mint and maybe Ubuntu.

Someone mentioned 7 vs 10...my dad's Core 2 Duo running 7 would come to a halt on 7. Task Manager showed resources pegged at 100% or near it. I put 10 on it, and it helped quite a bit. I still got fed up and just bought him a new Kabini build, and it's plenty for him to look at Facebook, watch "How to's" on YouTube, and play PokerStars.
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There are situations where a Linux distro can be more kind with older hardware but it's not like you'll be able to stream 4k video smoothly with it either.
 
There is a noticeable slowness to my old rig with the patch and I do not like!
 
Because those are paying customers, and Microsoft actually said they would support them. Why is this an issue for you? I guarantee it affects you in no way whatever is Microsoft supports them.

nysmo said:
Why should Microsoft have to cater to the lowest common denominator? Fuck those systems, just because it runs doesnt mean it is entitled to remain compatible with modern software. System is EOL, time to upgrade, or dont patch it anymore.
Click to expand...
 
M76 said:
Have you tried browsing on an older dual core recently? It's painfully slow, especially for youtube. More complex pages with lots of active content takes long seconds to render.
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I still use a 2ghz c2d lappy when out of the house (yeah I know, it's going to be replaced with pinnacle ridge or similar, I built her from scratch in another life..). Other than 720p yt video tearing sometimes or refreshing a catalogue on fullchan, it doesn't go that slow. Alll comes down to how much .js you have running..
To be honest with an SSD the main limitation is ram.
I can still video and photo edit in a pinch.
 
N4CR said:
I still use a 2ghz c2d lappy when out of the house (yeah I know, it's going to be replaced with pinnacle ridge or similar, I built her from scratch in another life..). Other than 720p yt video tearing sometimes or refreshing a catalogue on fullchan, it doesn't go that slow. Alll comes down to how much .js you have running..
To be honest with an SSD the main limitation is ram.
I can still video and photo edit in a pinch.
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I have a 5 year old 4core AMD laptop, and it's terrible. And I have a C2D E7400 oc-ed for email and browsing at work, and it's not that bad, but still wouldn't want that experience as my primary PC.
 
heatlesssun said:
This is considerably more powerful hardware than those older Athlons.
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Yeah true stock for stock, especially single core athlons. I have an oppy 165 duallie that when running heavy oc at 2.8ghz was definitely faster than the c2d for encoding video and other stuff. That said, laptop Vs desktop.. it was closer than I'd like.
Athlons were great in their time, as was the c2d. Both big jumps.

M76 said:
I have a 5 year old 4core AMD laptop, and it's terrible. And I have a C2D E7400 oc-ed for email and browsing at work, and it's not that bad, but still wouldn't want that experience as my primary PC.
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Is the quad SSD? Low per-core speed I guess otherwise..
And agreed, I wouldn't go back to primary with it again, spent 5+ months overseas and it was not so fun. For light work and browsing though she's fine.
When ffx hits the 2gb ram limit though, damnit..
 
N4CR said:
Is the quad SSD? Low per-core speed I guess otherwise..
And agreed, I wouldn't go back to primary with it again, spent 5+ months overseas and it was not so fun. For light work and browsing though she's fine.
When ffx hits the 2gb ram limit though, damnit..
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Yes it has an SSD, albeit a first gen one from 2010, but I doubt a newer SSD would do much for browsing speeds it has 8GB DDR3 so it shouldn't swap at all.
 
Cannot speak for Athlon, got rid of my X2 3800 s939 system 5 or 6 years ago.

But my Phenom II 955 system was up and running as of yesterday on Win 10 pro no issues, and it shuts down nightly. Pretty sure I installed the patch last week.
 
M76 said:
Have you tried browsing on an older dual core recently? It's painfully slow, especially for youtube. More complex pages with lots of active content takes long seconds to render.
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adblockplus + no script solves those slow render times....
 
Master_shake_ said:
all of those are EOL.
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I just looked at an article online written March 1, 2016 that talked about AMD announcing the Athlon x4 880k. It hasn't even been 2 years since it's release. While I know they may not be manufacturing the chips any more, I don't think it should be considered obsolete at this point. AMD supported old video cards in their drivers well past a 2 year period.

I use hardware past what most people around here do. I'm not a person who buys a $500 cpu or $600 gpu to use for 3 weeks and then turn around and sell it on here for a loss; I've never understood that. I just stopped using a 955BE in December 2016, and only then "upgraded" to a slightly less old FX-8150 because someone sold it to me at what I considered a good price.

I did break down this year and build my son an entirely new Ryzen 1700 system. Before that he was using an A8-7600. He had always gotten my hand-me-downs before. Now his system is better than mine.
 
naib said:
gentoo
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As long as you don't want to use anything current, Gentoo is probably an okay choice. I ran it for a while but I spent a LOT of time fixing it every time I tried to update it. I was using GNOME 3 back when it was still in the experimental branch because they were dead set against it. (Despite other distros using it as their base WM) GNOME 3 itself worked fine, but you get into dependency hell trying to unmask all of the files needed to keep your system working. I got tired of compiling for hours on end, and switched to Mint for GUI. It's definitely a much more sound choice for using a distro that has a graphical component to it.
 
bman212121 said:
As long as you don't want to use anything current, Gentoo is probably an okay choice. I ran it for a while but I spent a LOT of time fixing it every time I tried to update it. I was using GNOME 3 back when it was still in the experimental branch because they were dead set against it. (Despite other distros using it as their base WM) GNOME 3 itself worked fine, but you get into dependency hell trying to unmask all of the files needed to keep your system working. I got tired of compiling for hours on end, and switched to Mint for GUI. It's definitely a much more sound choice for using a distro that has a graphical component to it.
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anything current? I am in ~arch and within a day or two, new releases are in the tree. Every now and again they are held in bugzilla due to shoddy builds (libreoffice-5.4 was held back by a month but now its just updated
 
naib said:
anything current? I am in ~arch and within a day or two, new releases are in the tree. Every now and again they are held in bugzilla due to shoddy builds (libreoffice-5.4 was held back by a month but now its just updated
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I'm guessing you have a specific flag turned on that I didn't? Standard Gentoo out of the box the stable packages were months behind anything experimental, and anything not considered stable was masked until they decided to unflag it. Could have changed as well cause it's been a few years, but my experiences are certainly different than what you are seeing.
 
N4CR said:
Yeah true stock for stock, especially single core athlons. I have an oppy 165 duallie that when running heavy oc at 2.8ghz was definitely faster than the c2d for encoding video and other stuff. That said, laptop Vs desktop.. it was closer than I'd like.
Athlons were great in their time, as was the c2d. Both big jumps.
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If I recall, a C2D was almost a 50% uptake on the original x2 line. So clock for clock an E6600 was a beast compared to a say an Althon X2 4400+. I had an FX-60 back in the day, and I'm pretty sure IPC still went up when I got a Q6600 even at stock clocks. (I had the FX-60 at 2.8ghz and the stock of a Q6600 is 2.4) That stuff was so long ago it's hard to find the relevant data again.

EDIT: Best [H] article I can find:
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2006/07/13/intel_core_2_music_images_movie_performance/2

The X6800 is whooping on the FX-62 with a 25% advantage. But the FX-62 wasn't a launch processor either but I think it comparable to any 2MB L2 cache versions running at 2.8ghz. From memory that 6800 was 3ghz stock, the 6700 was 2.66, and the E6600 is 2.4. Pretty sure anything lower like the 6400 and 6300 had reduced cache levels. So all of that said I'd expect the E6600 stock to still be faster. The E6300 likely isn't, but it's not really in the same market.
 
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I had a customer bring in a P4 Northwood last week. It was tricked out with 512 megs of DDR and a 80GB HDD. Not sure why she hated herself so much to use that to browse the internet but whatever. Can't use it anymore, cause it's dead.
 
That's not tricked out! You can stuff 4GB of memory onto a P4, and it most likely had SATA 1 so 500GB HDDs or SSD upgrades are possible!
 
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