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Microsoft Details Performance Impact of Spectre and Meltdown Mitigations on Windows Systems (microsoft.com)
Microsoft's Windows chief Terry Myerson on Tuesday outlined how Spectre and Meltdown firmware updates may affect PC performance. From a blog post: With Windows 10 on newer silicon (2016-era PCs with Skylake, Kabylake or newer CPU), benchmarks show single-digit slowdowns, but we don't expect most users to notice a change because these percentages are reflected in milliseconds.
With Windows 10 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), some benchmarks show more significant slowdowns, and we expect that some users will notice a decrease in system performance. With Windows 8 and Windows 7 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), we expect most users to notice a decrease in system performance.
Windows Server on any silicon, especially in any IO-intensive application, shows a more significant performance impact when you enable the mitigations to isolate untrusted code within a Windows Server instance. This is why you want to be careful to evaluate the risk of untrusted code for each Windows Server instance, and balance the security versus performance tradeoff for your environment.
For context, on newer CPUs such as on Skylake and beyond, Intel has refined the instructions used to disable branch speculation to be more specific to indirect branches, reducing the overall performance penalty of the Spectre mitigation. Older versions of Windows have a larger performance impact because Windows 7 and Windows 8 have more user-kernel transitions because of legacy design decisions, such as all font rendering taking place in the kernel.
With Windows 10 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), some benchmarks show more significant slowdowns, and we expect that some users will notice a decrease in system performance. With Windows 8 and Windows 7 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), we expect most users to notice a decrease in system performance.
Windows Server on any silicon, especially in any IO-intensive application, shows a more significant performance impact when you enable the mitigations to isolate untrusted code within a Windows Server instance. This is why you want to be careful to evaluate the risk of untrusted code for each Windows Server instance, and balance the security versus performance tradeoff for your environment.
For context, on newer CPUs such as on Skylake and beyond, Intel has refined the instructions used to disable branch speculation to be more specific to indirect branches, reducing the overall performance penalty of the Spectre mitigation. Older versions of Windows have a larger performance impact because Windows 7 and Windows 8 have more user-kernel transitions because of legacy design decisions, such as all font rendering taking place in the kernel.
This is a complete cop-out.
People will need to balance their security against their performance.
While this isn't MS's doing, it's Intel, MS is essentially side-stepping this and saying "bummer, dude, but you should decide if you need performance or security".
No wonder this patch borked some systems, it sounds like it's something they half implemented, rushed out the door, and then threw up their hands.
Why is there no mention of AMD that does not suffer from the Meltdown vulnerability?
The statement is all INTEL.
I am sorry but how is 2015 called old? Most of 2015 was barely 2 years ago.
Interesting. Sounds like security is the inverse of performance.
Which is total bullshit. Intel needs to fix CPUs. We wouldn't have bought those CPUs if we knew that there were gross security vulnerabilities baked into them.
So, how do I apply for a partial refund from Intel for my CPU?
>> With Windows XX on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU)...we expect...a decrease in system performance. (So plan to buy a new proc from our licensed PC distributors soon.)
Kudos to Microsoft and Terry Myerson - great article with excellent details...
as long as you're running an Intel processor. Inquiring minds want to know where in the performance-hit list a Ryzen shows up. Does it have the " refined...instructions used to disable branch speculation to be more specific to indirect branches, reducing the overall performance penalty of the Spectre mitigation."?
And the worms ate into his brain.
Or are they ancient and not worth reporting?
Folks, your CPUs 2015 and older are obsolete ... how convenient for Wintel.. get that fancy new CPU and another copy of Windows 10, because what you have today is OEM version, so with a new CPU you'll need a new Windows copy.
That's the nice Windows 7 you got there. It'd be a real shame if something happened to its performance.
Does the "mitigation" eliminate any performance gain from branch speculation?
It’s all a nefarious plot to force people to upgrade their old computers to the newest models!
I don't think this is really that surprising. Modern CPU's are almost like mini-computers in themselves breaking down and reorganizing code on the fly internally. Fixing them means ugly workarounds which will usually cost a bit in performance. As time goes on, expect more of these issues rather than less. It's why most modern CPUs have a BIOS loaded table that makes workaround fixes in hardware although this problem is probably too big to fix there.
PCID is only supported on newer cpus and just so happens speeds up the performance of isolating kernel tables in software, which is required to block this decades-old exploit. And now Linux is having tons of undocumented patches to support this as well.
Well, at least we have nothing to worry about and go back to working, knowing that there's no way that anyone could use our sensitive information to proxy nefarious activities.
AFAIK, most of the issues people have with Windows 10 are about policies and the GUI. And on these aspects, is is reasonable to consider Windows 7 superior.
On the core technical aspects however, most people seem to agree that Windows 10, and even 8 are superior to 7.
Sounds like this isn't a big issue after all. Good job by Microsoft and Intel with their timely fixes!
Only on Slashdot could a company like Microsoft issue a well worded statement on performance degradation in relation to a hardware issue they have no control over, and be vilified over it and subjected to bullshit standard conspiracy theory garbage. Actually I take that back. They'll be vilified out of principle on pretty much every tech news site.
Windows 10 sucks (quantify that)
1. Keyloggers that send your keystrokes to Microsoft to serve targets ads in the OS. *cough* I mean 'Telemetry'.
2. Inability to control patches / updates
3. Reduced control over a system I *own*
There's a good start.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Windows 10 is a nice kernel but with an GUI made by preschool children on top of it... Maybe I change my mind and switch to it when the interface be made by real professionals, until then I'll continue with Windows 7.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
>>> 3. Reduced control over a system I *own*
I find this the most fascinating part of modern computing - "Here, pay me $700 for this smartphone so I can see everything you do, know everyone you know, and sell that information to anyone who'll pay me a dime for it. And, no, you're not allowed to stop me, or to even find out what information I'm collecting". Windows 10 moved that smartphone concept down to the PC.
This whole concept of paying large amounts of money for something that isn't yours (because you're not allowed to make unauthorized changes to it) and that's going to be used to make money off you is so new, and so foreign, that I have trouble with it. Maybe I'm just too old.
I remember when I trusted Quicken to not upload my whole financial database to Intuit for their perusal - and that now I assume that it does. I remember when I refused to get a supermarket loyalty card because I didn't like them tracking my purchases - until they implemented punitive pricing measures that "encouraged" my compliance. I remember when the concept of a car that stored my accelerations and speed for 10 seconds prior to an accident seemed like a huge invasion of privacy - and yet I have a Tesla Model 3 on order that will be able to count how many times I picked my nose on the way into work, and will likely use that information to advertise nasal sprays to me on the central display screen.
And the worms ate into his brain.
They say I/O. I wonder how the newer NICs with co-processors and deep buffers would do? They don't hit the CPU as hard.
Stick with it just stop pretending to be experts, telling others Windows 10 sucks (quantify that) and encouraging NOVICES who would benefit from architecture improvements to stay away from it because YOU don't like it.
Windows 10 fails to run quite a bit of legacy software developed for windows platform that functions just fine on windows 7 and earlier, this includes some very simple software using nothing but windows libraries.
Windows 10 fails to routinely respect user choice in things like allowed update install and reboot times.
On windows 10 the user is not in control of the machine even if logged in as administrator.
If you look on Nvidia forums theres a +100 page complaint thread about performance issues appearing over 2017 windows updates and smaller thread on microsofts own forums where their employees have been regularly responding and requesting additional telemetry on the issue after each patch..
No similiar complaints about windows 7 despite 7 being still more popular and I guess running with older hardware on average as well..
As a matter of fact I have hard time figuring any advantages windows 10 has over 7 except the "get help"-program that actually connects you to a microsoft employee, an actual person, at any hour of the day by a hit of a button, which I guess does make it more user friendly for tech-illiterates by leaps and bounds
The decrease is performance only happens if you manage to update the BIOS and there's fat chance of doing that on a Haswell motherboard! It'll have reached non-support EOL long ago.
And you let all these things happen.
Android phones can be re-imaged. Nobody forced anyone to use quicken or any software that uploaded everything to the could. I drive older cars not because I am broke but for how solid they are built, and they don't report shit.
If it's new, 'Free' has 'consequences'. For now, it's still my choice.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
I bet your fun at partys.
Windows 8 was preschool children - it may as well have had the "tiles" outlined in crayon.
Windows 10 is at least 3rd grade UI.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I've got a Windows machine just for playing games. I don't have any sensitive information in the machine, nor do I really care if I have to reinstall at any point (slightly annoying). So, how can I say to Microsoft "Thanks for looking out for me, but I'd rather the extra performance"?
Note that the machine on which I game is from 2015 so the "fix" would have a noticeable slowdown. I've already turned off automatic updates, but this would likely be classes as an emergency update which ignores the settings.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Windows bricked itself when running on some AMD CPUs.
GNU/Linux, for instance, did not brick itself.
Windows 10 fails to run quite a bit of legacy software developed for windows platform that functions just fine on windows 7 and earlier, this includes some very simple software using nothing but windows libraries.
People complained about this a lot going from XP to Vista/7. The culprit, in most cases, was a better security model for the operating system which broke old applications. I am perfectly fine with this kind of change.
Windows 10 fails to routinely respect user choice in things like allowed update install and reboot times.
This is largely resolved in v1709. You set your active hours, and you can override it when prompted if you're outside the active hours.
Or, for an unsanctioned fix, disable the Windows Update service until you want to install updates.
If you look on Nvidia forums theres a +100 page complaint thread about performance issues appearing over 2017 windows updates
There were all kinds of performance issues with XP, Vista, and 7 in the first couple years after release. And I expect 8 got a free pass because hardly anybody used it. This is not new, and FWIW, I think Vista still holds the crown as the most broken OS.
As a matter of fact I have hard time figuring any advantages windows 10 has over 7
There's lots of little things, which you would probably find if you tried the OS instead of complaining about it. Pinning windows to any/all desktops is the one thing I couldn't live without if I were considering going back to 7/8.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
we don't expect most users to notice a change because these percentages are reflected in milliseconds.
Most users don't even notice that percentages are dimensionless, so it makes no sense to translate them to milliseconds.Yes, I understand that he pretends to mean that the penalty for each instance of the problem only causes a delay of milliseconds, but still, the performance drop is there and many consecutive penalties aggregate into a noticeable slowdown.
Apart from this joke, this is a good move from MS.
Why do you limit it to Android? You know APL is doing it.
If you believe what they say, well, you're not a reasonable person. APL said so: "no reasonable person would believe [us]". Even if they don't do it themselves, there's tons of companies out there with user tracking software for all platforms, so they're profitting (again) by user ignorance.
At least with Android, you're able to disable software entirely, and even inthe integrated software like the Contacts request permission to do more (like showing you appointments you might have with them).
This is largely resolved in v1709. You set your active hours, and you can override it when prompted if you're outside the active hours.
Or, for an unsanctioned fix, disable the Windows Update service until you want to install updates.
I use windows 10 on my work laptop and in the up to date version I have installed on the option to change the active hours have been completely removed, futhermore microsofts own update prevention tool that lets you select individual updates doesn't work, at all, in my experience; If I let microsoft update the graphics drivers it completely breaks any gaming performance whatsoever, it also does the same every time theres a large patch and I have to remove all graphics drivers using DDU then reboot and hope windows hasn't started installing drivers against all settings so I can do clean install myself that will result in functional computer.
Also 1) was only in preview version of the OS, so your bias is showing. =P
2) Simply set your connection to Metered or grab the Pro version. If you want to manage the updates yourself, you're a pro. I read up on this and didn't have any problems disabling updates.
3) I don't see any reduction in control. You go in as admin, you disable the Windows Update services or whatever other telemetry you dislike.
So, no.... not a good start. So what are your ACTUAL complaints?
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-automatically-windows-10
or just get the pro version, since if you're disabling forced updates, you BETTER be a pro.
I know about how some people hate phoronix.com but he's got a lot of linux benchmarks comparing before and after with both meltdown and spectre patches (kernel and gcc).
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=clear-kpti-retpoline
This particular article and the others I've looked at pretty clearly indicate that MS is full of crap, performance hits are generally uniform across the board with some variations. Interesting some of the very worst deltas are from the core i9.
Yeah, good luck with that. Microsoft "fixed" that: Pro ignores group policy, you can defer but not disable auto updates.
Just because you can ask the question, doesn't mean there is an answer for it. Not everyone knows everything and your post is proof of that.
Also, a little less all caps, if you please.
I am running a Skylake Core i5-6500 with 8GB RAM and a 250GB Samsung SSD with Windows 7 Home Premium and I have the patch installed and haven't observed any slowdowns.
Just kicked of a full compile (in VS 2017) of a large (~2100 files) project I have here and I saw no noticeable slowdowns compared to how fast the thing compiled before the patch. And such a thing would be highly I/O bound (reading all the input source files and things, writing out compiled obj and other files, reading toolchain binaries etc) and likely making a lot of kernel-user transitions.
I have no games on here that are demanding enough to show any observable difference between old and new so I cant test those.
If a company offers you a free service, then you are the product being sold
and arbitrarily and artificially slowing down older kit extra to "protect the users" from their problems, while encouraging new sales of course.
And the only thing that will make them feel better is more of your money spent on a new Windows 10 license..
With bonus tracking and forced updates, so, sure, 3rd grade, but you're still forced to wear diapers and are monitored by cameras all day.
Wow. And I thought the constantly breaking trackpad driver on my friend's laptop every update was annoying.
What the hell is Microsoft's problem? Do they not understand that removing sane control over updates is driving people away from Windows 10?
That used to be the case, but it's completely changed now. Now you pay big money, and you are still the product being sold. In fact there's absolutely no way to not be the product being sold with most new products these days. I miss the days when you could say that only the free services were selling you as the product, now you have to assume that every service does that. No matter how expensive.
Maybe replace "sold" with "farmed"
how do they come up with these idiotic ideas?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
What is the impact of Spectre on ClearLinux?
Casteism
>>> 3. Reduced control over a system I *own*
and yet I have a Tesla Model 3 on order that will be able to count how many times I picked my nose on the way into work, and will likely use that information to advertise nasal sprays to me on the central display screen.
Checking our databases shows that you used to shave going to work - Now it is "picking your nose" so that information has been updated. Thank you!
Didn't MS put in code to disable Windows updates for Win7 users if they upgraded their CPU to a newer CPU?
I wonder if this policy will change?
Hmmm....