PleaseDontBanMe
Banned
So where do we sign up for that class action lawsuit?
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PC Hardware: CPU Security bug, Fix causes up to 30% performance.
- Thread starter Meh3D
- Start date
Tarin02543
Member
What about Apple computers?
Nah, it's the opposite. Unless very strangely designed, games that use modern APIs generally end up using *less* syscalls to submit stuff to the GPU. So besides load times which may very well be affected by I/O getting slowed down, modern games will barely be affected at all by the OS workaround (not gonna call it a fix, heh), at least not their rendering paths.
Dr. Zoidberg
Member
Are the experts saying that Intel intentionally did this, or has known about it for years, and it's only now coming to light? Or is this a classic example of a bug that is discovered and exploited by researchers and then companies scramble to mitigate it before it is leaked to the public? The way people are talking about lawsuits it sounds as if something malicious is involved.
I'm not talking about that' dude's stock sell-off, that's only tangentially related.
I'm not talking about that' dude's stock sell-off, that's only tangentially related.
Insane Metal
Member
Holy shit, imagine if Intel CPUs suddenly got hit by 20 to 50% less performance? God damn!
Edvardelis
Member
Intel CPUs, so yes, they're just as vulnerable.
HamsterExAstris
Member
The latter.
Blam
Member
Lol what it's literally a max 30% drop. Where'd you get 50%?
dc3k
Member
no it literally isn't, unless you've somehow tested everything affected and ignored the published benchmarks showing a greater than 30% drop
Insane Metal
Member
It's right there in the OP... some people are claiming even 50% performance hit.
HoodWinked
Member
may not end up having that big of an impact on gaming performance
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=x86-PTI-Initial-Gaming-Tests
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=x86-PTI-Initial-Gaming-Tests
- Damage Control: Intel accuses media of being inaccurate and says saying it's not just it's own processors claiming the "processors are susceptible to the exploit" without naming them. (Press Release.)
- The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) says this is a problem with Intel processors specifically. LINK
- ARM confirmed that Cortex-A processors are affected LINK
Hiro_Kunimi_80
Member
it seems not quite as Windows OS ...
http://appleinsider.com/articles/18...fix-in-macos-for-kpti-intel-cpu-security-flaw
Rellik
Member
It's pretty much everything according to Google including Android and iOS.
Google confirms its Project Zero team disclosed processor vulnerabilities. Says CPUs from AMD, ARM, and Intel are affected https://t.co/s9Acq3dvsK
Agent_4Seven
Tears of Nintendo
Looks like games are not affected by performance loss when KPTI is activated - https://3dnews.ru/963636
Kamina
Golden Boy
Great news. But those FS Marks for 8700k are crazy....
Apple already fixed this with 10.13.2 a month ago.
Paracelsus
Member
If it's affecting IO as much as they claim it does, they basically crippled cloud and ssd market for a decade if not more. How will Intel not be legally put out of business as in "you're done, out, go away and never come back" is beyond me.
Apparently there are two sploits.
One affects Intel cpus only, called Meltdown.
The other, Spectre, affects all modern cpus, including AMD and ARM. Which means almost all phones, tablets, laptops and pcs are vulnerable!
And while Meltdown can be patched at software level (and cause slowdown up to 30%), Spectre is a fundamental hardware design flaw, dating back to around a decade!
As I understand, experts are still figuring out how to deal with the latter.
https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-privileged-memory-with-side.html?m=1
One affects Intel cpus only, called Meltdown.
The other, Spectre, affects all modern cpus, including AMD and ARM. Which means almost all phones, tablets, laptops and pcs are vulnerable!
And while Meltdown can be patched at software level (and cause slowdown up to 30%), Spectre is a fundamental hardware design flaw, dating back to around a decade!
As I understand, experts are still figuring out how to deal with the latter.
https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-privileged-memory-with-side.html?m=1
Blam
Member
I mean spectre seems even worse then Intel's problems since that seems like it can't even be patched out completely since it's a hardware problem.
So you want a PC market ruled solely by AMD? Don't be ridiculous.
Xdrive05
Member
I may have missed this in the news, but is it possible to NOT take the software patch on Intel? Or will it be forced in a Windows update or something like that?
Because if I just use my computer for gaming (and I don't only use it for gaming; thought experiment), and I want the most performance, I'd possibly rather roll the dice with the exploits.
Because if I just use my computer for gaming (and I don't only use it for gaming; thought experiment), and I want the most performance, I'd possibly rather roll the dice with the exploits.
TheHellsLord
Member
Microsoft rolled the fix into today's cumulative update. So unless you stop installing updates altogether (which isn't even possible on the consumer versions of Windows 10) you will get the update installed.
As mentioned gaming seems largely unaffected. Certain corporate workloads see a much bigger hit.
As for how big - it depends. 50 % seems to be the upper limit in case a program basically only does syscalls but that's not true of gaming and should not be encountered outside of synthetic benchmarks doing exactly that.
It seems most workloads regular users at home will see is in the range of low single digit impacts if it's outside the measurement tolerance at all.
johntown
Banned
You can disable the Windows Update service on home PC's to prevent the patch.
intheinbetween
Member
soo... after all of this, is the 8700k a good choice for gaming mostly or a 1800x?
Blam
Member
Still a good choice as these bugs don't effect fps.
qa_engineer
Member
Sounds like gaming wont be impacted but I have noticed my cpu running hotter, for no reason, while idling now. Also see random cpu usage spikes that didn't happen before.
This shouldn't really affect temperatures either. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details (I slept through some of my OS classes...), but the performance hit for syscalls seems to be due to keeping the kernel and user in different address spaces, so there's a big cache swap associated with moving between modes. So your processor should basically spend most of that time waiting on memory, which isn't actually stressing the processor or generating heat. If anything, this patch should cause CPUs to run (negligibly) cooler, since you're giving the processor a little break every time you make a syscall.
magnumpy
Member
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7W5zsLp7xY
this is a critical vulnerability, the problem isn't software but the hardware. so this affects potentially every console gamer and basically every pc gamer
basically the fix will involve patching software and ultimately ensuring that all future laptops/consoles/whatever don't have the vulnerability :/
this is a critical vulnerability, the problem isn't software but the hardware. so this affects potentially every console gamer and basically every pc gamer
basically the fix will involve patching software and ultimately ensuring that all future laptops/consoles/whatever don't have the vulnerability :/
Twinsen343
Member
I would have thought there would have been many more benchmarks with the performance impact when gaming?
My Assassin's Creed Origins benchmark lost a few FPS, from 59 to 56
4770, 980ti
My Assassin's Creed Origins benchmark lost a few FPS, from 59 to 56
4770, 980ti
It's not just Intel:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...odern-processor-has-unfixable-security-flaws/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...odern-processor-has-unfixable-security-flaws/
The article mentions Intel/AMD (x64) and ARM-family, but there are even more architectures suspectible to this bug, including System Z, Power8 and Power9.
https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/speculativeexecution
Sosokrates
Report me if I continue to console war
Will games consoles see reduced performance?
llien
Member
Actual security flaw has been discovered in a number of Intel CPUs.
CPUs by other manufacturers also could be "at risk".
Yet AMD has stated specifically their chips don't speculate about kernel addresses.
ARM stated some revisions could be vulnerable.
Blatant "cover Intel's arse" FUD.
What does it have to do with consoles? Maybe Switch has an issue, but it has been sorta hacked (using backdoor left by nVidia) already anyhow.
magnumpy
Member
well it looks like microsoft will be following the usual "patch tuesday" deal, and an update will be released this next tuesday? disaster averted, yay? since this is now a known exploit I have no doubt that the consoles will receive similar updates.
only thing is, they are saying this "fix" will disable a portion of the cpu, early tests show a reduction in performance of up to ~30%?
only thing is, they are saying this "fix" will disable a portion of the cpu, early tests show a reduction in performance of up to ~30%?
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Nothing disables a portion of the CPU, but fix makes certain OS things that used to run at a certain speed before much slower now, and depending on how much your software uses those things, your software can be affected too. Games and computational software are fairly safe (negligible hit, if any), but software that does plenty of I/O (i.e. mainly server software) can be hit seriously.well it looks like microsoft will be following the usual "patch tuesday" deal, and an update will be released this next tuesday? disaster averted, yay? since this is now a known exploit I have no doubt that the consoles will receive similar updates.
only thing is, they are saying this "fix" will disable a portion of the cpu, early tests show a reduction in performance of up to ~30%?
The big uproar brought about this entire issue comes from the fact that most of the servers in the world use CPUs from the vendor that is affected the most from the OS slowdown in the fix.
I wonder though... I mean someone could release a demo in the marketplace that has some code to exploit it. Apparently web browsers are also exploitable too since it can be done via javascript, so popular gaming site gets hacked, some evil javascript is ran on console browsers.
Leads to the question, what could really be stolen that's of any value in a console?
Perhaps saved credit card information, passwords, your gamerscore (kidding). Perhaps your online identity, address?
magnumpy
Member
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
I see the potential for spyware, but other than that, what I get about this bug, it is one that is not primarily to the disadvantage of the user, but one that can lead to security breaches from the content provider's perspective. Breaking security of encryption by having access to the machine itself could be very interesting for people trying to circumvent copy protection or to break open closed environments like consoles.
TheHellsLord
Member
Spyware can be quite a big disadvantage to users - think of identity theft, stolen credit card details, account takeovers, etc. The consequences of those things should not be taken litely (honestly - my machine being used to send Spam is in my mind far less of an issue than the data potentially being taken).