Hardware & Technical Intel/Meltdown Benchmark Results

Spruxxx

Spruxxx
Very useful, cheers. Interestingly I ran the tool and my Intel CPU is not vulnerable, quite old though - i5-2500k 3.3Ghz from 2011. Not that my 980Ti notices though hehe!



That said, my motherboard is a bit crash happy in old age (9/10 total hardware lock, occasional bluescreen with 'WHEA_Uncorrectable_Error' - Win 7 / 10 no difference, and no useful mem dumps. I suspect SATA controller + terrible Marvell BIOS and drivers), so just prior to Meltdown I was thinking of getting a new PC, sans GFX card.


So not sure what is the best bet now, any thoughts appreciated:

1. I could wait until the next gen of issue-free processors come along (Ice Lake, maybe later?) that *may* avoid the performance drop. But no idea when that would be, give Coffee Lake was just released.

Or

2. Given the performance impact to gaming seems to be negligable (and I don't run VMs on my gaming machine etc), perhaps the current gen of Coffee Lake will come down in price much faster than expected and I can get a great spec for less cash. As you can guess I like getting a decent and reliable spec and then running it for years [up]

(except for Marvell kit, will avoid that company like the plague)
 

GammaZ

G
Spruxxx said:
Very useful, cheers. Interestingly I ran the tool and my Intel CPU is not vulnerable, quite old though - i5-2500k 3.3Ghz from 2011. Not that my 980Ti notices though hehe!
...
That said, my motherboard is a bit crash happy in old age (9/10 total hardware lock, occasional bluescreen with 'WHEA_Uncorrectable_Error' - Win 7 / 10 no difference, and no useful mem dumps. I suspect SATA controller + terrible Marvell BIOS and drivers), so just prior to Meltdown I was thinking of getting a new PC, sans GFX card.


So not sure what is the best bet now, any thoughts appreciated:

1. I could wait until the next gen of issue-free processors come along (Ice Lake, maybe later?) that *may* avoid the performance drop. But no idea when that would be, give Coffee Lake was just released.

Or

2. Given the performance impact to gaming seems to be negligable (and I don't run VMs on my gaming machine etc), perhaps the current gen of Coffee Lake will come down in price much faster than expected and I can get a great spec for less cash. As you can guess I like getting a decent and reliable spec and then running it for years
up.gif


(except for Marvell kit, will avoid that company like the plague)
Click to expand...
The link in OP is wrong, those tool checks for completely different (and old too) vulnerability in IME.
...
There is no complete software fix for any of current CPU-s possible, so IMO buying anything currently is bad idea, it is better to wait and see how things go. It may take few years to produce fixed CPU though...
 
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Spruxxx

Spruxxx
Ah I see, thanks.

Re fixed CPUs, yeah I'm happy to wait, but not two years. If that's the timescale for a true fix then I'll probably look to pick up a current gen CPU at cut price, which fingers crossed, happens soon [up]
 

GammaZ

G
Spruxxx said:
Re fixed CPUs, yeah I'm happy to wait, but not two years. If that's the timescale for a true fix then I'll probably look to pick up a current gen CPU at cut price, which fingers crossed, happens soon [up]
Click to expand...

There is some hope that since intel evidently knew about vulnerability for some time they may have been working on fixed CPU too. It is not an easy/fast thing to do, but if they had enough time there is at least slight hope that next they CPU may be fixed already. But... all this speculations may be wrong and if they start now it will, most likely, take few years at least...
On the other hand... it does not seem that terrible for home/single user PC. It is local vulnerability and as long as PC is not infected by malware through some other hole/vulnerability it should be fine...
Also some info about performance impact from redhat: https://access.redhat.com/articles/3307751
 
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Jon flint

Jon flint
Yet more game benchmarks (for i5 8400 and i7 4790k);
[video=youtube_share;LC1WuKdPVCQ]https://youtu.be/LC1WuKdPVCQ[/video]
 

The Lawful

The Lawful
FWIW, the recent Windows patches apparently only address the Meltdown bug. Spectre fixes, in particular those for CVE-2017-5715, will apparently be introduced via microcode updates. According to Intel, there are two approaches. "Modern" CPUs will get three new instructions via a microcode patch (IBRS/STIBP/IBPB) that will also be part of future Intel CPUs. The second approach uses a mechanism named "Return Trampoline" and will be available in CPUs back to Broadwell. Both may lead to additional performance hits.

https://newsroom.intel.com/wp-conte...is-of-Speculative-Execution-Side-Channels.pdf

BIOS upgrades are already underway, namely for ASUS boards (https://www.asus.com/News/V5urzYAT6myCC1o2).

Let's hope for the best.

EDIT: Intel has released first details about the performance losses caused by the above updates. Expect a 7%-10% performance loss on "modern" processors. SSD-IO takes a major hit of up to 21% for the poor i7 6700k in SYSMark 2014 SE. Other tests, though, obviously see a SSD performance loss of up to 50% in some scenarios (Core i7-8700K, Asus Maximus X Hero, Samsung 960 Pro, 4K blocks seem to be the worst). In contrast, HDDs don't seem to care much.

https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/intel-security-issue-update-initial-performance-data-results-client-systems/

DigitalFoundry ran some tests on various games (poor Witcher):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC1WuKdPVCQ&feature=youtu.be

For German readers:

https://www.heise.de/newsticker/mel...Prozent-ab-SSD-I-O-deutlich-mehr-3938747.html

Installed the ASUS BIOS update yesterday and played ED for some hours (i7-7700K, ROG Z270H, 1070GTX OC, SSD, Oculus), no noticable difference, though. Safety is priceless ;)

O7,
[noob]
 
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