Intel CPUs: Upcoming OS updates might bring up to 30 % loss in performance

According to "The Register" almost all Intel CPUs sold in the last decade suffer from a massive design flaw that can compromise the security of the machine.

To fix this, all major operating systems have to be updated accordingly. The problem: These security updates will mean a decrease in CPU performance of up to 30 percent. This will undoubtedly also hit common virtualisation environments including Amazon EC2 and Google Compute Engine, render farms etc.

AMD CPUs are not affected, yet it is unclear at the moment if those security updates will be forced upon AMD-based systems regardless.

If you're thinking about buying a new machine with an Intel CPU, you might want to wait until it is clear that the respective CPU model is not affected by this.

Arg! Thanks for the heads up on that. One more thing to worry/obsess about. :O

my main beast is AMD

since INTEL and AMD cpu have different addressing don't think that the INTEL updates will be active even if they are installed

thanks

seems the actual effect this will have on performance for INTEL is going to vary with setup

I'm more concerned with direct application effects than any slow down per se. Knowing MS, it's likely they will break something else in the process of patching and that could affect applications whatever chip is used. (I too am running AMD.)

true enough - but you could say that is part of the fun of every major MS update..... :rolleyes:

video editing/rendering and latency-free music mastering are very cpu sensitive - so I'll certainly be keeping an eye on performance there

Ya know, with the exception of one font related bug in either 7 or 8 that was subsequent fixed, I've never experienced such update bugs as seen in 10. Makes me wanna roll back to 8.1.

the step changes have been iffy - updates like 'creators' I installed manually using the media creation tool MS supply for download - I am tempted to do a clean install of the ceators fall and reinstall everything, it's a question of time

most of the problems I've seen seem to stem from the piecemeal updating, and with changes to things like screen rendering that some programs are not up to speed with...and so need patching

back on topic:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42553818

Apparently, it's not just Intel.
AMD and ARM processors are also affected.

have you a link for that Rik?

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...-security-flaw

and another [slightly more technical :)] https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.c...with-side.html

because of the different ways INTEL and AMD processors handle such things, the risk is pretty theoretical for AMD, much more serious for INTEL at least that is how I read it.. and I'm not a geek I could be wrong...

more light reading: https://securityintelligence.com/cpu...and-leak-data/

.....

There are two different security flaws at play here:

a)
MELTDOWN, which seems to only affect Intel and ARM CPUs and will be fixed shortly, thereby probably causing a system slowdown on these CPUs of presently unknown proportions. This issue is rather easy to exploit, so it needs to be fixed quickly.

b)
SCEPTRE, which is said to affect CPUs of all vendors. From what I have read it is quite hard to exploit, but even harder to fix.

thanks

exploitation I think is dependent on malicious code running on your machine - therefore cloud services are going to be far more vunerable maybe, than individual users [provided they understand security]

interesting blog here: http://blog.erratasec.com/2018/01/so...l#.Wk3j1vkS_cs

some links at end to INTEL and AMD statements amongst others

look what I just got :)

Attachment 119737

https://www.windowscentral.com/micro...cessor-exploit

From what I heard on the Radio today, MELTDOWN affects Intel and SPECTRE affects AMD and ARM.

more on spectre https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/4/16...aws-google-cpu

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by handrawn

look what I just got :)

---

I don't get this shown yet...
Quickly ran a 3DMark benchmark on all my PCs - one older AMD desktop (FX8350) and an Intel notebook from last year (Intel Core i7-6700HQ) to be able to compare performance before and after the patch. Will report the results back when available.

On the AMD the update is still a no show, but on the Intel it came through this morning.
3DMark "Time Spy" benchmark (Top = pre-patch / bottom = post-patch). Seems to indicate a drop in CPU performance of roundabout 3 percent:

Attachment 119740

around 3% is a figure I have seen reported as 'typical' [whatever that means]

there are some issues with the MS update - with some AV software for example - so that may affect whether it is offered

see here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...date-kb4056892

plus some general info here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasb.../#d22636d5c31b - which has link to a list of 'compatible' AV providers in the MS section

Yup. My AV is one of the compatible ones (Kaspersky)...;)
I wondered if I don't see this yet because the respective machine is AMD: As that is not affected by MELTDOWN, perhaps Microsoft slightly delays the distribution of that patch to AMD PCs in order to lessen the load on their servers?

mine is AMD ... not tried the INTEL yet

distribution is often geographic, or OS version dependant, mine is the latest windows 10

mind you I have not yet restarted - just because it is available does not mean for sure it will install - we shall see... ;)

update is installed - on benchmark made less than 0.5% difference to digital content creation - overall score actually a tad higher.... 'course you can't tell for sure from a snapshot, have to look at trends....

Update installed - on 2 workstations.
1st Intel i7, 64 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 2 HD at 1 TB – no changes in CPU usage – running: XDP, AI, CorelDraw 2017, Affinity Designer, Thunderbird, Firefox 57.03, Foobar (for Internat Radio) and many backround services with windows 10 pro 1703.
2nd Intel i5, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 1HD at 1 TB – no changes in CPU usage – running: XDP, AI, CorelDraw 2017, Affinity Designer, Thunderbird, Firefox 57.03, Foobar (for Internat Radio) and many backround services with windows 10 pro 1703.

All seems to be like before. Maybe is it on 32bit slower, I will check it on my win-tablet soon.

it does appear to have killed my ASUS motherboard CPU monioring fan control and turbo ulility.. still looking at this,pain but not a priority at the moment can do the basics in BIOS....

EDIt- it's totally stopped working, guess understandable at the level it operates at... have to wait for ASUS to update the utility ... (:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by handrawn

it does appear to have killed my ASUS motherboard CPU monioring fan control and turbo ulility.. still looking at this,pain but not a priority at the moment can do the basics in BIOS....

EDIt- it's totally stopped working, guess understandable at the level it operates at... have to wait for ASUS to update the utility ... (:

---

Bot hmachines have the same Motherboard: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z170-P D3 (LGA1151) and the same Graphic Card: AMD Radeon R7 370 Series (Sapphire/PCPartner)

I like to repeat myself: NO PROBLEMS!

do you use the ASUS AI SUITE II ernie? - if so presumably it's working for you?

it ok by me if you repeat yourself [I do it a lot, lots :)]

And now the results for the AMD machine are in. "Time Spy" shows a 0.7 percent drop of CPU performance after the patch, but I guess that's totally within the error margin of the benchmark:

Attachment 119744

Makes sense to me: If that patch disables certain features of Intel CPUs and replaces them with a software solution, why would AMD CPUs suffer from that. They did not have those features to begin with and probably always used a software based approach.

damn and now I have a USB3 issue, may be co-incidence, but may be to do with the ASUS turbo charge.. I am not happy

Hi handrawn,

here no problems. And no I haven't the Asus Suite installed and I'll never do it.
What maybe can be a problem is the revision-number of the board and the used CPU.

I reverted back to before the update - asus suite working again..... mostly I use it for fan control and to keep half eye on cpu temperature

yes it's definitely the update - there has been lots of forum activity in other places

for anyone affected by AI Suite 11 being broken there is an AI Suite III on the way... if you are the kind of person who like to play beta, you can download the beta here: https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?98800

at this point in time the first link has reached it's download limit.. but the alternative is still ok - just shows how important fan control and o/c is in certain quarters - I have to rack the fans up when rendering and down when playing [quiet] music it's a fact of life [can't use cans all the time]