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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

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,

Designed by the NSA, I presume?

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...

Mike in O wrote:Designed by the NSA, I presume?

Nice guess - 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

Slowing down by 30% sounds like a lot. Should I start overclocking ?

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%.

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

Apple released the fix for Spectre in todays High Sierra update. Meltdown was fixed in previous updates.

MS rolled out the fixes on Jan 3. I have not noticed any change in performance.

Deja vu' all over again! Remember Y2K? Media cranked that up. Looks like same media hysteria.

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.

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

I don't doubt what everyone is saying - my point was that the media (esp TV) was employing their typical alarmist reporting.

Two questions about this issue. Does this issue affect Win7 x64 PC's and did the Jan 3 fix apply to Win7 x64?

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.

If you're still using Windows 8, you should really upgrade to Windows 10 if you ask me 

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...

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?