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by WJaekel on Thu Jan 04, 2018 12:08 am
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All Windows and Mac computers using Intel chips for the last 10 years evidentally are affected, see for example

http://bgr.com/2018/01/03/intel-chips-s ... c-windows/

The issue was reported in the TV news, too.  If the mandatory patch actually slows down the PC by 30 % it's really bad

Wolfgang
 

by E.J. Peiker on Thu Jan 04, 2018 8:36 am
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The thing the article gets wrong is that the details of it are not under wraps at all.  Here is a highly technical article on the vulnerability:
https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/ ... -side.html

Also note that certain AMD and ARM chips have ta similar vulnerability,
 

by Mike in O on Thu Jan 04, 2018 2:08 pm
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Designed by the NSA, I presume?
 

by E.J. Peiker on Thu Jan 04, 2018 2:12 pm
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Mike in O wrote:Designed by the NSA, I presume?
Now that's a great conspiracy theory - the NSA planted a design engineer to design this into the chips... :o
 

by WJaekel on Thu Jan 04, 2018 7:50 pm
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Mike in O wrote:Designed by the NSA, I presume?
Nice guess :wink: - at first sight I was rather thinking of a marketing strategy to push the purchase of new and faster computers to make up for the loss in performance. Anyway, it's funny that we discuss the performance gain of faster Harddisks, RAM upgrades and SSDs and now maybe have to live with a loss of 30 %.

Wolfgang
 

by DChan on Thu Jan 04, 2018 9:26 pm
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Slowing down by 30% sounds like a lot. Should I start overclocking ? :)
 

by E.J. Peiker on Fri Jan 05, 2018 8:01 am
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From what I have read it isn't a 30% across the board slowdown, it is a 0-30% slowdown depending on what you are doing. the average performance loss is probably much less than 30%.
 

by Brian Stirling on Mon Jan 08, 2018 3:48 pm
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Mike in O wrote:Designed by the NSA, I presume?

Well such things have happened but I seriously doubt they managed to convince Intel to embed this defect.  OTH, what are the odds the NSA and GCHQ and others were aware of and exploiting it -- probably pretty high!


Brian
 

by EGrav on Mon Jan 08, 2018 4:39 pm
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Apple released the fix for Spectre in todays High Sierra update. Meltdown was fixed in previous updates.


Last edited by EGrav on Mon Jan 08, 2018 6:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Mon Jan 08, 2018 5:23 pm
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MS rolled out the fixes on Jan 3. I have not noticed any change in performance.
 

by EGrav on Mon Jan 08, 2018 6:36 pm
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Deja vu' all over again! Remember Y2K? Media cranked that up. Looks like same media hysteria.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Mon Jan 08, 2018 7:46 pm
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EGrav wrote:Deja vu' all over again! Remember Y2K? Media cranked that up. Looks like same media hysteria.
I worked on Y2K mitigation. ;)  
Part of the reason Y2K was a big nothing was that hundreds of thousands of technical professionals around the world made sure that it was a big nothing.  Had this not been undertaken, there would have been quite a bit of chaos.
 

by WJaekel on Tue Jan 09, 2018 12:17 am
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EGrav wrote:Deja vu' all over again! Remember Y2K? Media cranked that up. Looks like same media hysteria.

I'm not sure to play it down for being just a media hysteria. Accepted specialists have discussed and confirmed the issue, too. Imagine, that critical systems such as traffic light control, autonomous driving or power suppliers could be attacked by hackers once they get aware of the issue. In fact, the publication and distribution of that vulnerability in the media could rather have been the bad part unless there's no quick solution. Of course, there's no reason for panic, though, and it's good that MS, Apple etc. have reacted quickly. Nevertheless, quite a few experts are of the opinion that a software patch will not totally fix that vulnerability and basically an exchange of the chip would be required. I don't know. As to our work we will have to wait if demanding tasks in Photoshop etc show a noticeable hit in performance in consequence of the patch. The latest news suggest, that the loss is not so high as originally calculated. We will see.

Wolfgang
 

by EGrav on Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:33 am
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I don't doubt what everyone is saying - my point was that the media (esp TV) was employing their typical alarmist reporting.

:D
 

by Tim Zurowski on Tue Jan 09, 2018 5:47 pm
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Two questions about this issue. Does this issue affect Win7 x64 PC's and did the Jan 3 fix apply to Win7 x64?
 

by DChan on Tue Jan 09, 2018 6:12 pm
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Microsoft says Meltdown and Spectre fixes will slow some PCs down significantly
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Jan 09, 2018 6:42 pm
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Microsoft also want Windows 7 and Windows 8 users to upgrade to Windows 10. Anything that comes out of Microsoft's mouth regarding Win 7 and 8 should be seriously questioned. I ran before and after benchmarks on my "older chip" Win 7 machine and there was no measurable difference. Running multiple applications simultaneously also did not reveal any discernible slow down on my machine.
 

by DChan on Tue Jan 09, 2018 7:28 pm
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If you're still using Windows 8, you should really upgrade to Windows 10 if you ask me  :lol:
 

by Robert on Wed Jan 10, 2018 2:34 pm
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Not being a technophile, I must admit I am puzzled by all of this. A fix was sent out by MS on Jan 3, but I see no record of a fix for Win 8.1. It's about the Intel chips and yet MS (and Apple) are putting out fixes, and Intel says it will have fixes for most chips by the end of Jan?

As is the usual case, I am sitting on the sidelines waiting for the scrum to be decided... :?
 

by Tim Zurowski on Wed Jan 10, 2018 3:56 pm
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E.J. Peiker wrote:I ran before and after benchmarks on my "older chip" Win 7 machine and there was no measurable difference.  Running multiple applications simultaneously also did not reveal any discernible slow down on my machine.
Can we assume that this means "yes" the Jan 3 fix was also for Win 7x64?  
 

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