Intel bug incoming? Meltdown and Spectre exploits

drunkenmaster · 10 Jan 2018 at 13:00

stockhausen said:
To be honest, in those slightly contradictory phrases (did -vs- do) you have covered one of the three most important points.

Intel screwed up, AMD (for whatever reason) didn't. Intel will make 100% sure that they take more care in future and will make a point of reinforcing this to their major customers.

I don't know how long it takes to build a chip fabrication plant but I doubt that it happens overnight; AMD may simply be unable to ramp up production fast enough to take advantage of people's entirely justified frustration and anger at Intel.

Somehow I can't see WinTel being replaced by WinAMD - Microsoft have a long established relationship with Intel. I have been to conferences hosted by Microsoft and Intel, personally I have never been to a conference hosted by Microsoft and AMD.

Incidentally, I am a long-term fan of AMD and would love to see them overtake Intel in the CPU supply field.

They aren't contradictory, AMD are less vulnerable because they did things the right way, that is simply the facts of this security issue. This leads to companies trusting AMD more because they believe they choose to do the right things and the next security flaw is less likely to affect them precisely because they are known to do the right thing and make the right choices.

hudson86 · 10 Jan 2018 at 13:40

thenewoc said:
It's the Spectre vulnerabilities you're exposed to without the bios update AFAIK.

In the same boat with Z77 so I will be relying more on a newly patched browser and ad blocking which my AV provides. Ideally use a separate browser with only one tab open to log in to anything sensitive like banking. Along with being cautious of any software I install, hopefully will be enough to block someone from having the chance to execute code on my machine. The most common vulnerability I see being exploited will be through a rogue ad that gets served up on a site you trust so I'll be ad blocking on mass.

Will hope to limp through like this I guess until either Ryzen+ or Ryzen 2. Will be interesting to see how well each of the motherboard manufacturers handle their bios support for this fiasco and will be taking note of those doing the best job when it comes to buying my next one for Ryzen.

Thanks that's good advice. I've already enabled Site Isolation in Chrome in lieu of the upcoming updates, but yes i'll have to be extra extra careful when browsing / using multiple tabs. Need to find an ad blocker / AV that might add any further protections then as currently using MS Defender for AV on Win10.

What AV do you use ?

thenewoc · 10 Jan 2018 at 14:17

neil473 said:
Thanks that's good advice. I've already enabled Site Isolation in Chrome in lieu of the upcoming updates, but yes i'll have to be extra extra careful when browsing / using multiple tabs. Need to find an ad blocker / AV that might add any further protections then as currently using MS Defender for AV on Win10.

What AV do you use ?

Same here with the Chrome Site Isolation option.

I use Kaspersky which has a banner ad blocker built in but if I was using Defender I'd research for a stand alone / browser based ad blocker add on, I think 'AdBlock' extension is the most popular.

thenewoc · 10 Jan 2018 at 14:38

I notice Intel have released a 'Linux Processor Microcode Data File' on the 8th January for the Ivy Bridge i5 3570K, is this what the motherboard manufacturer requires to update their BIOS?

https://ark.intel.com/products/65520/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz

pete910 · 10 Jan 2018 at 14:48

Looks to be for more than that!

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27431/Linux-Processor-Microcode-Data-File?product=52214

RavenXXX2 · 10 Jan 2018 at 14:58

wozzizname · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:04

The Meltdown /Spectre patch from Microsoft made one of the older Xeon servers at work almost unusable - I've had to take the patch off...

gavinh87 · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:10

RavenXXX2 said:

So, patches slowed the 8400 down a bit. But still faster than a 1600. Most users will have nothing to worry about.

pete910 · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:11

Lets be honest, like I've said in a previous post. Desktop was never the worry for performance it was always server task .

gavinh87 · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:16

pete910 said:
Lets be honest, like I've said in a previous post. Desktop was never the worry for performance it was always server task .

What I'm more surprised is the bios updates have close to zero impact where the windows updates are the biggest offenders. (In this video anyway)

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:18

RavenXXX2 said:

This is a disaster for me - the reviewer says it seems to games which stream data a lot which are the worst affected,ie, open world games and if that is happening with a new Core i5 8400,what about the rest of us who have older Intel CPUs??

I still play a reasonable amount of FO4(with lots of mods) and large settlements and its actually unplayable for me without an SSD. Also,AMD is not that great in game either. I also have got back into playing ARK.

pete910 · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:18

gavinh87 said:
What I'm more surprised is the bios updates have close to zero impact where the windows updates are the biggest offenders. (In this video anyway)

From what I had seen it's the combination of bios + OS that appear to have the biggest hit on either OS

gavinh87 · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:21

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
This is a disaster for me - the reviewer says it seems to games which stream data a lot which are the worst affected,ie, open world games and if that is happening with a new Core i5 8400,what about the rest of us who have older Intel CPUs??

I still play a reasonable amount of FO4(with lots of mods) and large settelements and its actually unplayable for me without an SSD. Also,AMD is not that great in game either. I also have got back into playing ARK.

Isn't far cry 4 open world? Shame they used the canned benchmark not real gameplay.

pete910 · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:24

Is it an issue in a game pulling 120+ fps anyway bar your twitch shooters?
I admit its a drop though. Not watched vid, is the higher end I7's hit the same ?

gavinh87 · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:25

pete910 said:
Is it an issue in a game pulling 120+ fps anyway bar your twitch shooters?
I admit its a drop though. Not watched vid, is the higher end I7's hit the same ?

He only shows 8400/1600 unfortunately.

Things change I've changed · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:30

I'm not updating nothing, with a 2500k I'm teetering on the edge with performance as it is, I'm not prepared to lose any more.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:34

gavinh87 said:
Isn't far cry 4 open world? Shame they used the canned benchmark not real gameplay.

The W3 and ROTTR areas they tested are spot on though as they are quite taxing. ROTTR saw a dip too.

pete910 said:
Is it an issue in a game pulling 120+ fps anyway bar your twitch shooters?
I admit its a drop though. Not watched vid, is the higher end I7's hit the same ?

The issue is some of the areas are more CPU demanding,so even with lesser card and higher resolution you can see CPU limitations,etc especially if you are running an older CPU like me. Skyrim was the first game to really implement a sucessful streaming tech,hence why you have an openworld you can traverse without loading screens.

For instance I had a GTX960,RX470 and GTX1080 and I still saw the same kind of dips in the FO4 settlements and certain areas of the game with the same CPU(IB Core i7) even at 1680X1050,1920X1080 and 2560X1440,and if the latest greatest CPUs show such a dip,what about older ones which MS has said will potentially be worse hit?? The sad thing is most review sites will ignore SB,IB and Haswell even though many of us still use systems based on those CPUs. I might have bought a 1600 by now,but being Bethesda,is unlikely they will fix performance on Ryzen so that is out of the window at least for now,and if the 8400 I was considering is going to be hit,then I am stuck. I don't also really overclock that much since I have a SFF system,so maybe I need to just deal with crapper performance and see what Intel and AMD has next year,ie,hopefully the newer chips will have been fixed so don't need the performance sucking fixes.

gavinh87 · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:36

I reckon hardware unboxed will be doing a monster cpu benchmark soon.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:42

gavinh87 said:
I reckon hardware unboxed will be doing a monster cpu benchmark soon.

The issue is that some of the games based on older engines won't be tested sadly,and from what I gathered from that Reddit user doing a few tests,it will be those games which potentially will be affected more - even the W3 uses a relatively modern engine.

I suppose on the flip-side even if I were to lose 10% performance,minimums still suck for me in parts of FO4,so not much change I suppose!

Edit!!

I doubt many of us on IB and Haswell will get updated BIOS revisions either.

humbug · 10 Jan 2018 at 15:59

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
This is a disaster for me - the reviewer says it seems to games which stream data a lot which are the worst affected,ie, open world games and if that is happening with a new Core i5 8400,what about the rest of us who have older Intel CPUs??

I still play a reasonable amount of FO4(with lots of mods) and large settlements and its actually unplayable for me without an SSD. Also,AMD is not that great in game either. I also have got back into playing ARK.

That's a drop of 11 or 12%, its significant, what Microsoft called a small but barely noticeable difference, they also said 4'th and 5'th generation Intel CPU's would see a significantly higher drop in performance, so 20+ %?

Not good.