# Microsoft's incompetence or deliberate performance degradation



## RejZoR (Jul 17, 2018)

I have enough of this nonsense and I hope it'll blow up into Microsoft's face because this freaking does it.

I have an AMD A9-9420 laptop (4GB RAM, 256GB SSD, genuine Win10, latest BIOS) bought in January 2018 which is entirely useless just half a year later if it's running Windows 10 1709 with KB4338825 update or anything later. If I update it to latest 1803, it's the same slow turd and I can't even fix it because problematic code is in the base update itself. So, after removing KB4338825, laptop became fast again. With KB4338825 being uninstalled and blocked, I received new updates today, KB4345420 and KB4284819. Which both do the exact same nonsense. Turn quite capable laptop into absolute snail. Uninstalled these two stupid updates and bam, performance is back.

Actual measurable evidence and not just my "feels":

KB4284819 | KB4345429 | Both problematic updates removed




 

 



Look at the absolutely insane single thread drop of performance with mentioned updates installed. From score of 184 down to just 100. I lost basically half of performance because of some dumb updates.

I'm now forced to use genuine Windows 10 with Windows Update disabled because it's screwing up performance so badly I can't afford to update it anymore if I even want to use it at expected speed.

I don't know what the hell is going on, but this is absurd. I bought the laptop and I have genuine Win10 and I can't use it fully updated. All other Intel systems don't experience this, not even weak laptop with Atom Z8300. And guess what, my old AMD E-450 laptop became slow in the EXACT same way years ago now that I think of it. Which makes me believe Microsoft is doing this deliberately to AMD systems or they are this god damn incompetent that they are screwing it up so badly by mistake.


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## newtekie1 (Jul 17, 2018)

I'm just amazed someone would by a dual-core Bulldozer based computer in 2018...

Also, at least one of those updates addresses the speculative prediction vulnerabilities, performance decreases are to be expected.


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## R-T-B (Jul 17, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> Also, at least one of those updates addresses the speculative prediction vulnerabilities, performance decreases are to be expected.



Bingo.


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## GoldenX (Jul 17, 2018)

Drop Windows 10 and call it a day, only the first version was any good with low end hardware, today is the most expensive bloatware.


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## R-T-B (Jul 17, 2018)

GoldenX said:


> Drop Windows 10 and call it a day, only the first version was any good with low end hardware, today is the most expensive bloatware.



I mean while partially true, he'll find the same patches in Windows 7 land, Spectre isn't avoidable.  Use Inspectre to turn off the mitigations or blacklist the appropriate patch.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 18, 2018)

OS doesn't matter.  The vulnerability is in silicon and there's a performance penalty for fixing it no matter how it is addressed.


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## GoldenX (Jul 18, 2018)

R-T-B said:


> I mean while partially true, he'll find the same patches in Windows 7 land, Spectre isn't avoidable.  Use Inspectre to turn off the mitigations or blacklist the appropriate patch.


You can disable updates on Windows 7, and on Linux distros, the patch is not that hard on performance.


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## Hood (Jul 18, 2018)

Well, so much for "I'm so glad AMD isn't affected by Spectre, I'll never buy another Intel CPU!", or such, as I've heard dozens or variations of this statement.  So much that I was starting to believe it to be true.  I would be pissed off too, if I lost half my performance to an update.  I guess we're all on "borrowed speed", gained by trickery in speculative branch prediction, now lost by mitigation of same.  But half seems excessive, way beyond normal losses.  I suppose AMD needs to look into this, before all their Bulldozer victims get together to march on Santa Clara with torches and pitchforks.  This is bad.  Intel and AMD owe all of us, they're both guilty of "grabbing the low-hanging fruit" of performance without regard for the security consequences.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 18, 2018)

Instead of clearing the TLB, they should have just killed VM support.  That's the heart of the problem.


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## OneMoar (Jul 18, 2018)

TODAY ON TECHPOWERUP NEWS
middling ageing APU gets lower benchmark after patching spectr
MORE NEWS AT A 11

btw you can turn the fixes off in the registery without turning windows update off'
if your system is correctly configured the patch is disabled-by-default 

so once again a clue you do no have


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## natr0n (Jul 18, 2018)

OneMoar said:


> TODAY ON TECHPOWERUP NEWS
> middling ageing APU gets lower benchmark after patching spectr
> MORE NEWS AT A 11
> 
> ...



Pure Savagery.


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## OneMoar (Jul 18, 2018)

natr0n said:


> Pure Savagery.


tired of hearing about this from people that can't be effing bothered to read the patch notes or the massive documentation microsoft provides

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...ive-execution-side-channel-vulnerabilities-in

if you disable the variant 1 fixes all the fixes are disabled


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 18, 2018)

GoldenX said:


> Drop Windows 10 and call it a day, only the first version was any good with low end hardware, today is the most expensive bloatware.


W10 LTSB or Win 7, he can always look at www.askwoody.com MSDEFCON and find out what updates really bork up the os...


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## plonk420 (Jul 18, 2018)

or OP could give some real world before and after performance changes rather than some arbitrary benchmark numbers

also



RejZoR said:


> And guess what, my old AMD E-450 laptop became slow in the EXACT same way years ago now that I think of it.



was slow to begin with... i should know, i had an E-350


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## GoldenX (Jul 18, 2018)

You all know that this performance drop only happens in Windows, right?


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 18, 2018)

GoldenX said:


> the patch is not that hard on performance.


Oh yes it is.


GoldenX said:


> You all know that this performance drop only happens in Windows, right?


Incorrect, the performance drop happens in all OS platforms implementing a fix, whether it's BSD, Linux, MacOS, Unix, or anything else.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 18, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> I'm just amazed someone would by a dual-core Bulldozer based computer in 2018...
> Also, at least one of those updates addresses the speculative prediction vulnerabilities, performance decreases are to be expected.


While true, that dramatically? There's more at play than those patches explain.


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## RejZoR (Jul 18, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> I'm just amazed someone would by a dual-core Bulldozer based computer in 2018...
> 
> 
> Also, at least one of those updates addresses the speculative prediction vulnerabilities, performance decreases are to be expected.



Because I've tested it prior buying it and it met my expectations and was cheaper than anything Core i3. And this isn't "Bulldozer". It's vaguely based on it, but it was hand modified (unlike Bulldozers which were computer designed) to dramatically boost single thread performance and IPC. Also came with proper 256GB SSD that isn't DRAM-less garbage. Performance decrease to be expected. Not by bloody 50% for god sake so it turned it from as fast as my desktop Core i7 at casual office tasks down to slower than comuter I've had 2 decades ago. Not even mouse moves smoothly across desktop anymore. That's not normal by any metrics. Stop pretending like it is.



OneMoar said:


> TODAY ON TECHPOWERUP NEWS
> middling ageing APU gets lower benchmark after patching spectr
> MORE NEWS AT A 11
> 
> ...



Dude, there is a difference between "slightly lower performance" and "performance so degraded even mouse doesn't move smoothly across the screen anymore". I know you can disable updates, but what's the point when some next will screw everything up next time and then I have to deal with stupid long downgrade porcedures. And my computer is configured properly. I even updated BIOS that was specifically designed to address Spectre stuff and latest that adds support for 1803 update. Anything else, genius?



plonk420 said:


> or OP could give some real world before and after performance changes rather than some arbitrary benchmark numbers
> 
> also was slow to begin with... i should know, i had an E-350



E-350 or E-450 are NOTHING like this A9. NOTHING. I've had E-450 (which also got this slow basically overnight by god knows which update from the past). Those two clock to 1.6GHz and have shit IPC. This one clocks to 3.6GHz and was specifically modified to boost single thread performance compared to other Bulldozer based CPU's. Literally anything I throw at it works in a heartbeat. Except when garbage updates are installed...

Real world examples? Boot takes like 5x longer, start menu is opening 2x slower, opening simple JPG image takes 10x longer, Opera browser takes 5x longer to open and it is loading webpages so slowly you almost die waiting, Youtube lags and stutters at 480p. But one can always say "you're just imagining things". Which is why I ran CPU-Z to have hard numbers.


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## RejZoR (Jul 18, 2018)

OneMoar said:


> tired of hearing about this from people that can't be effing bothered to read the patch notes or the massive documentation microsoft provides
> 
> https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...ive-execution-side-channel-vulnerabilities-in
> 
> if you disable the variant 1 fixes all the fixes are disabled



Do you read KB documentation for every single update that gets automatically installed because that's the new awesome Microsoft's updating policy? Dude plz...

As for the "if you disable variant 1 thing", that clearly isn't the case when I did that and it installed two more retarded updates that screw up the performance in exact same way. In fact I don't know why OS even has to install ANYTHING given that InSpectre already says my system is not vulnerable to any Spectre or Meltdown even prior all these updates? How does that make any sense?


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 18, 2018)

He has a point. His information is factual and displays a very real problem. Whining he is not. An obscure choice of laptop is *not* an invalid or incorrect one. It was likely a choice of opportunity. And only a special-snowflake would think the presentation of information made here is "whining". Please do stop being coincidentally ironic.

While I disagree that it is TPU's fault, there are an increasing number of people being needlessly negative and trolling. The world has changed in the past few years, some ways for the better and in some ways not so much. TPU has had to adapt. The number of people being jerks and special-snowflakes has increased and has forced everyone else to be a bit more defensive than in previous years.

EDIT; the comments originally quoted have been removed, so the context of this response may seem weird. Still, I'm going to leave it up.


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## bogmali (Jul 18, 2018)

Thread sanitized. Let's keep it clean


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## RejZoR (Jul 18, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> He has a point. His information is factual and displays a very real problem. Whining he is not. An obscure choice of laptop is *not* an invalid or incorrect one. It was likely a choice of opportunity. And only a special-snowflake would think the presentation of information made here is "whining". Please do stop being coincidentally ironic.
> 
> While I disagree that it is TPU's fault, there are an increasing number of people being needlessly negative and trolling. The world has changed in the past few years, some ways for the better and in some ways not so much. TPU has had to adapt. The number of people being jerks and special-snowflakes has increased and has forced everyone else to be a bit more defensive than in previous years.



The choice of A9-9420 was well thought out and isn't "obscure" really. For the low demanding tasks it's used for, dual core with insane core clocks was a better choice than any quad core with lower clocks. I've also done extensive research on the architecture of it to know it's more suited for the tasks this laptop is used for. When everything is normal (as it was at the time of purchase, 6 months ago), it runs everything super smoothly. Experience of browsing, image editing, music and movies is no different than on 50x more powerful dekstop. Same for Youtube that plays smoothly at 1080p60. After updates, it's almost impossible to browse because it all lags and stutters and Youtube takes half a minute to even load and then it lags at 480p. At 1080p60 basically just stalls after 2 seconds. Hell, like I've said, you can even feel that something as simple as mouse cursor moving across desktop is all stuttering and laggy and you can instantly tell something is horribly wrong. Anyone saying such dramatic difference that even mouse cursor doesn't work smoothly anymore is "normal" has to have a brain damage.

It is even more ironic knowing AMD isn't affected by given vulnerability in same way yet gets such horrendous performance degradation where Atom Z8300, a much weaker CPU that is in fact affected works just the same as it did 1 year ago even after all the patches and using build 1803 (where A9 needs older 1709 with selective updates removed to even work).


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## R-T-B (Jul 18, 2018)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Instead of clearing the TLB, they should have just killed VM support.  That's the heart of the problem.



It's a speculative execution timing attack on caches?  I don't know where you get "VM" from that.


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## Melvis (Jul 18, 2018)

Have you tried a complete fresh install of the latest version of 10 (1803)? As yes I have seen slow downs on other computers soon after certain updates and a fresh install seems to help.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 18, 2018)

RejZoR said:


> The choice of A9-9420 was well thought out and isn't "obscure" really. For the low demanding tasks it's used for, dual core with insane core clocks was a better choice than any quad core with lower clocks. I've also done extensive research on the architecture of it to know it's more suited for the tasks this laptop is used for. When everything is normal (as it was at the time of purchase, 6 months ago), it runs everything super smoothly. Experience of browsing, image editing, music and movies is no different than on 50x more powerful dekstop. Same for Youtube that plays smoothly at 1080p60. After updates, it's almost impossible to browse because it all lags and stutters and Youtube takes half a minute to even load and then it lags at 480p. At 1080p60 basically just stalls after 2 seconds. Hell, like I've said, you can even feel that something as simple as mouse cursor moving across desktop is all stuttering and laggy and you can instantly tell something is horribly wrong. Anyone saying such dramatic difference that even mouse cursor doesn't work smoothly anymore is "normal" has to have a brain damage.


Fair enough. If it meets your needs, than it is a good choice. And I agree, these changes are dramtic enough to warrant serious concern and action.


RejZoR said:


> It is even more ironic knowing AMD isn't affected by given vulnerability in same way yet gets such horrendous performance degradation where Atom Z8300, a much weaker CPU that is in fact affected works just the same as it did 1 year ago even after all the patches and using build 1803 (where A9 needs older 1709 with selective updates removed to even work).


You're not alone. These observations are being made all over the place. I have personally seen examples of this kind of problem. This is one of the reasons I disable automatic updates altogether as they have been traditionally more hassle and headache than they're worth. Instead, I teach my clients and customers good computing and security methodologies. Helping people learn a good computing ethic is far more valuable than any patch or fix will ever be.


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## RejZoR (Jul 18, 2018)

Melvis said:


> Have you tried a complete fresh install of the latest version of 10 (1803)? As yes I have seen slow downs on other computers soon after certain updates and a fresh install seems to help.



Yeah, 1803 is this slow "out of the box" and with no fixable option because you can't remove any individual updates. Downgrading to 1709 and removing problematic updates resolved it. I'm not aware of any method where I could selectively kill specific KB's that come as part of 1803 itself.
I've done like 5 fresh installs to even pinpoint what was even causing it (after going through several GPU driver revisions thinking it's GPU issue since everything visual was lagging and it wasn't accelerating Youtube videos).

@lexluthermiester 
I prefer my systems fully updated. This laptop is used mostly by my mom and even though I manage it, I can't always know what is going on with it. This is why I really dislike the idea of not updating it for the sake of it even being usable...


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 18, 2018)

R-T-B said:


> It's a speculative execution timing attack on caches? I don't know where you get "VM" from that.


Because that is the best avenue of attack for these vulnerabilities. Hyper-Threading is another. Disabling both will block 99% of the security risks exposed by them.


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## R-T-B (Jul 18, 2018)

RejZoR said:


> It is even more ironic knowing AMD isn't affected by given vulnerability



AMD is affected by Spectre.  Can't believe we are still going in circles on that point.



lexluthermiester said:


> Because that is the best avenue of attack for these vulnerabilities. Hyper-Threading is another. Disabling both will block 99% of the security risks exposed by them.



Uh, not really?  I'm really going to have to call a citation needed here.  It flies in the face of everything I have read.  It's a timing attack on caches.  Hyperthreading...  I mean I'm not even sure what that has to do with it?

Just because server farms are most at risk (because they tend to have barriers set up in VM form) does not mean that is the only vector for attack, or even how the attack works.  It just means they are the long hanging fruit target wise.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 18, 2018)

R-T-B said:


> AMD is affected by Spectre. Can't believe we are still going in circles on that point.


AMD CPU's are not affected in the same ways. Yes they can be exploited, but it is more difficult to do so when compared to Intel CPU's and this is because of the VM and HT implementations, generally. For the older, non-VM CPU's the difficulties are almost identical and generally need physical access to the PC in question to exploit.


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## R-T-B (Jul 18, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> AMD CPU's are not affected in the same ways. Yes they can be exploited, but it is more difficult to do so when compared to Intel CPU's and this is because of the VM and HT implementations, generally. For the older, non-VM CPU's the difficulties are almost identical and generally need physical access to the PC in question to exploit.



Irrelevant when you consider that;

a.)  AMD has every reason to sell you that line.
b.)  Microsoft has no reason to do so.
c.)  Microsoft pushed Spectre fixes globally.  So did linux, and several other vendors.

I think the proof is in that pudding.  "More or less" vulnerable, potato potatoe, they are still vulnerable enough to be an issue or they wouldn't push the fix.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 18, 2018)

R-T-B said:


> a.) AMD has every reason to sell you that line.


Not really. This is proven fact. AMD CPU's are not exploitable in the same ways as Intel, nor are they as severely affected. ARM CPU's are in the same boat.


R-T-B said:


> b.) Microsoft has no reason to do so.


Rubbish. Microsoft is very well known for pulling tricks and nonsense such as this to favor their preferred hardware vendors. Whether it is, in this instance, a deliberate act, laziness or sheer carelessness remains to be seen.


R-T-B said:


> c.) Microsoft pushed Spectre fixes globally. So did linux, and several other vendors.


Yes, but the Android, iOS, MacOS, BSD, Unix and Linux patches have not had the same affected on those platforms that these patches have had on the AMD platforms.


R-T-B said:


> I think the proof is in that pudding.


Agreed.


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## RejZoR (Jul 18, 2018)

AMD A9-9420 (3.6GHz dual core, 4GB RAM, 256GB M.2 SSD) -> Absurd degredation of performance down to unusable levels when fully updated OS (3 individual updates causing performance problems)

Intel Atom Z8300 (1.44GHz quad core, 2GB RAM, 64GB eMMC) -> No noticeable performance degradation even when fully updated OS

I mean, it doesn't require an expert to see something doesn't add up when objectively weaker laptop has no performance degradation due to updates, but superior one becomes like 10 times slower than the weak one.

I have no clue how to solve this nonsense long term and MS's support was next to useless. I spent 1 hour explaining things to the person on the other end and then they've just done what I've already done myself, removed the update manually. That's not much of a fix when you want to keep OS updated because MS itself is pressuring you to do so on all ends.


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## Assimilator (Jul 18, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> Yes, but the Android, iOS, MacOS, BSD, Unix and Linux patches have not had the same affected on those platforms that these patches have had on the AMD platforms.



Considering Linux drivers are generally worse than their Windows counterparts, would anyone running Linux notice the impact of Spectre patches? More to the point, would anyone running Linux really be running it on a dual-core potato?

Fact of the matter is, it seems like there is almost no information on what the actual performance impact of Spectre/Meltdown patches is on AMD CPUs - not on the high-end models, and certainly not on the potatoes. Given that, it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that all we're seeing is that low core count CPUs suffer far more from these patches than HCC ones.

I would try getting in contact with someone from AMD to confirm this - they're much more likely than Microsoft to be interested in fixing this issue, if it can be fixed.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 18, 2018)

Assimilator said:


> Considering Linux drivers are generally worse than their Windows counterparts


Speaking from personal experience, no they aren't. Linux driver are more often than not more efficient and stable than Windows drivers, by design and necessity.


Assimilator said:


> I would try getting in contact with someone from AMD to confirm this - they're much more likely than Microsoft to be interested in fixing this issue, if it can be fixed.


AMD has already done their part. This is entirely in Microsoft's ballpark.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 18, 2018)

R-T-B said:


> It's a speculative execution timing attack on caches?  I don't know where you get "VM" from that.


Because the attack has to come from an administrator account and the only scenario where you have a malicious administrator user account on a machine with accounts that aren't malicious is when there's multiple VMs running on the same silicon.  Namely, cloud computing.  A user could buy a VM on the cloud and then use that VM to siphon data from other VMs hosted on the same hardware.

In a single user environment with no VMs running, the only potential administrator is the user himself/herself.  There's no reason to plug the vulnerability.


Microsoft _should_ condition the install of the Specter/Meltdown fixes based on whether or not Hyper-V is enabled.


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## Vario (Jul 18, 2018)

Put 7 back on it and enjoy it for the remaining 1.5 years.  Make sure to read the 7 KBB descriptions as you patch it up.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 18, 2018)

Vario said:


> Put 7 back on it and enjoy it for the remaining 1.5 years.  Make sure to read the 7 KBB descriptions as you patch it up.



Is he using a HDD, moat low end laptops were using a 5400 hdd in them to begin with, most troubles for 10 were due to an HDD and most forget to optimize the hdd.

Also he should try www.blackviper.com


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 18, 2018)

Windows, since 7 (maybe Vista), has automatically defragmented hard drives.  Windows since 8 (I think) also automatically optimizes solid state drives.


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## HD64G (Jul 18, 2018)

That performance difference cannot be because AMD CPUs are vulnerable to any security threat. My 8350 hasn't seen any performance loss at all from windows update. So, something is bad with those updates for specific cpus and MS should fix that asap.


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## trparky (Jul 18, 2018)

RejZoR said:


> AMD A9-9420 (3.6GHz dual core, 4GB RAM, 256GB M.2 SSD) -> Absurd degradation of performance down to unusable levels when fully updated OS (3 individual updates causing performance problems)
> 
> Intel Atom Z8300 (1.44GHz quad core, 2GB RAM, 64GB eMMC) -> No noticeable performance degradation even when fully updated OS
> 
> I mean, it doesn't require an expert to see something doesn't add up when objectively weaker laptop has no performance degradation due to updates, but superior one becomes like 10 times slower than the weak one.


Um... wait, so you're saying that the AMD system is superior to the Intel system in this situation. Are you trying to make me laugh here? Because you're doing a damn good job, I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from laughing here.

The AMD chip you're talking about is essentially AMD Bulldozer. OK, I know you're going to say that it's _technically_ Excavator but Excavator is basically Bulldozer with a couple of tweaks. Basically lipstick on a pig here. AMD's Bulldozer architecture was a steaming pile of horse shit, there was a reason why after coming out with that sorry excuse of a processor AMD's image took a major hit; it was because it was garbage (no, to call it garbage would be an insult to garbage). So no, the AMD chip is a piece of shit when compared to that of the Intel Atom Z8300 here in pure benchmarks, add in Spectre and Meltdown patches and you'll have that AMD chip so loaded down it would be like asking a Yugo to pull a tractor trailer.

If it weren't for Ryzen AMD would be dead today, Ryzen brought that company (figuratively and literally) back from the edge of death. How you expected that garbage AMD chip to be anywhere close to decent, I have no idea. There's a reason why Intel reigned supreme for so many years.


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## AltCapwn (Jul 18, 2018)

eidairaman1 said:


> Is he using a HDD, moat low end laptops were using a 5400 hdd in them to begin with, most troubles for 10 were due to an HDD and most forget to optimize the hdd.



Windows 10 + HDD = bug of the 100% disk usage for no reason.

But initialy, op has a SSD.



trparky said:


> Um... wait, so you're saying that the AMD system is superior to the Intel system in this situation. Are you trying to make me laugh here? Because you're doing a damn good job, I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from laughing here.



Atom < AMD APUs, he doesn't mean that Intel is worse than AMD. Atom is a lower spec part than AMD Apu's. His point was that lower spec CPUs has less performance hit than higher spec CPUs, AMD vs Intel has nothing to do here. But I guess it's because the performance hits can be count in percentage.


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## RejZoR (Jul 18, 2018)

Exactly. I actually own both, A9-9420 and Atom Z8300 and there is no way Atom is in any way better. It may have more cores, but it runs at 1.44GHz in best case (I haven't ever seen it clock higher even though it should up to 1.8GHz afaik). It's IPC also isn't magical just because it's Intel. People think uh oh Stoney Ridge is based on Bulldozer so it must be crap. Entirely ignoring the fact it has updated instructions set, improved IPC and is heavily single thread focused where Bulldozer was everything but that because they traded all that for MOAR CORES approach. This A9 is VERY fast for a lower end CPU and such absurd performance hit makes zero sense.


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## Kursah (Jul 18, 2018)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Windows, since 7 (maybe Vista), has automatically defragmented hard drives.  Windows since 8 (I think) also automatically optimizes solid state drives.



Windows 7 SP1 could trim/optimize SSD's at the logon screen iirc. But it is still recommended to check and ensure TRIM is enabled and to enable it if it isn't already, which it usually was by default when an SSD was detected. Pre-SP1...that's a different story. But post-SP1 I recall being pretty SSD friendly.

https://lifehacker.com/5640971/check-if-trim-is-enabled-for-your-solid-state-drive-in-windows-7




Vario said:


> Put 7 back on it and enjoy it for the remaining 1.5 years.  Make sure to read the 7 KBB descriptions as you patch it up.



That is an option, or toss the latest Ubuntu on there. Going back to Gnome GUI has been pretty solid and far smoother performance-wise on low-end gear, I've had my mom able to easily use a spare system I had with it while I get hers back up to snuff (Win10 system). We are talking an old dual core/4GB RAM/HDD system and it's nice and snappy right now with Bionic Beaver. The latest Ubuntu has been a pleasure to use and deploy for users, and I would venture to say one of the best iterations of the OS yet to be released. 




RejZoR said:


> I have no clue how to solve this nonsense long term and MS's support was next to useless. I spent 1 hour explaining things to the person on the other end and then they've just done what I've already done myself, removed the update manually. That's not much of a fix when you want to keep OS updated because MS itself is pressuring you to do so on all ends.



Unfortunately 2018 has been pretty busy with a LOT of "oops" patches from MS. There's still one they keep pushing out monthly that has the potential to cause NIC ports to stop working but still be present. This has been a huge pain in the ass, because this has been happening monthly since April (or March) because there is a security element that MS keeps pushing out, then another element that kills NIC activity, but they can't seem to separate them.

I work for an MSP and we utilize Continuum ITSupport RMM, which we also use to whitelist/blacklist Windows updates, we've been mostly staying ahead of the curve since April except for the time MS 0-dayed one of the security patches that also contained the "NIC killing bug". That was an all hands on deck situation going on-site to repair/reinstall NIC drivers where we could on systems that didn't have WiFi adapters available (A LOT of them didn't, but now have at least a spare on-site that is usable thanks to this). 

The most current KB that has been blacklisted through our RMM service, and also one we're blocking on WSUS is KB4338818. 

Here's a quick statement provided by Continuum: 



> *[Action Required] Microsoft July 2018 Security Updates KB4338818 Blacklisted for All Partners*
> 
> *Date: *7/11/2018
> 
> ...



The frustrating part, and I feel your pain @RejZoR is that we really shouldn't have to be manually filtering or controlling patches. There are many situations where that doesn't happen, but it seems the situations to pay more attention to Windows updates and having to remove or blacklist them has definitely increased in frequency as Windows 10 has matured. Which seems pretty backwards to me as well. But in the age of seems like almost daily vulnerabilities being reported, maybe it shouldn't be so surprising. 

Either way, maybe going W10 LTSB as @eidairaman1 suggested earlier in the thread would be the appropriate way to go. Use Win Defender + whatever you prefer, use DNS filtering service(s), etc...you probably already do all of that for her though. Sure you won't have the latest and greatest security patching, but with the latest and greatest security patching causing issues, that might not always be such a bad thing.


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## GoldenX (Jul 18, 2018)

gpedit.msc and kill Windows Update?
Wasn't the Linux patch pushed by Intel to be global but Linus stopped it?


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## Deleted member 163934 (Jul 18, 2018)

Kursah said:


> That is an option, or toss the latest Ubuntu on there. Going back to Gnome GUI has been pretty solid and far smoother performance-wise on low-end gear, I've had my mom able to easily use a spare system I had with it while I get hers back up to snuff (Win10 system). We are talking an old dual core/4GB RAM/HDD system and it's nice and snappy right now with Bionic Beaver. The latest Ubuntu has been a pleasure to use and deploy for users, and I would venture to say one of the best iterations of the OS yet to be released.



I'm using Lubuntu on the pc with Sempron 145 (single core, second core is totaly unstable), 4 GB RAM, gt 720, hdd. Win 10 was basicaly killing the poor Sempron, Win 7 SP1 x64 totaly unpatched was acceptable, Win 7 SP1 x64 with most important updates (I have like 3 that I never install) was painfull for the poor Sempron.

The problem might be easier to notice on older AMD cpu due to their lower single thread performance compared to Intel cpu. I notice a performance degradation on my other pc with Athlon x4 640 between Win 7 SP1 x64 totaly unpatched and Win 7 SP1 x64 patched with important updates except IE10, IE11 and KB2670838 , on the other had I notice no performance degradation on the Pentium G3260 even after updating the bios to get the microcode for Spectre.

1.81 from 12/10/2018 (dd/mm/year , to make it clear for everyone)





1.81 from today




(I no longer have Windows on the x4 640 (moved it to mint mate 5 days ago). By next year I plan to move all my pcs to Linux except one crappy one that will stay on Windows just to have a pc on Windows  .)

yes the score from today is constantly lower (anyway less than 5%) compared to the one from october last year but well it's the microcode from the bios and the meltdown/spectre patches. 1.81 because this looks to be the latest I have before the meltdown/spectre thingy.
3dmark scores are also a bit worst compared to the ones I was getting last year but again it's under 5%.

Bulldozer has low single thread performance. It's a weird design to be honest and I failed to see what exactly they wanted to do with it (I don't really see who they were targeting at release, gamers clearly not, people that were already having a pc and using it for browsing/office didn't really had a need to upgrade in most cases k8/k10 cpus could still do that).

L.E.: If reinstalling Windows and patching it gives exactly the same result then well that points to an issue with a windows patch and something else in the pc. What something else? Not easy to tell. Win 10 has a passion to install on it's own drivers, maybe one patch just doesn't play well with one driver that Win 10 itself installed. But it doesn't have to be that. It can easily be a perf regression that was introduce in the patch that triggers only in particular situation (in this case it can be (but it doesn't have to be this) the Bulldozer architecture that well it's not exactly like the rest of the cpus). I don't have a Bulldozer based cpu so I can't test if it's a problem with this particular cpu architecture or not, if it is others will probably notice it sooner or later and there will be topics about this problem. Things become more complicated if the regression triggers only in a particular mb + cpu combination and worst if a particular mb bios bug is triggering it (mostly because there will be less cases reported, but in same time easier to figure out the problem because all of them will have something easy to notice in common)...

L.E. 2: I find really weird the single thread performance loss in OP post. It's almost half the single thread performance lost (even if I assume that after the patch the A9-9420 stop using the turbo clocks that 600 mhz between 3ghz and 3.6 ghz shouldn't have such an impact, it should be ~153 (+-10%) if before the patches it was going into turbo freq and after patches it's not going; if this was my laptop i'd stop the cpu from downclocking (bios if possible or windows) and use cpu-z bench again, if for some reasons in the single thread test it doesn't clock properly well this anomaly can be explained).... Multi thead performance looks be somehow fine, but if I see single thread performance lost I expect the multi thread performance to go down also. At least from my point of view the multi thread ratio shouldn't really show such changes.


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## trparky (Jul 18, 2018)

Kursah said:


> There's still one they keep pushing out monthly that has the potential to cause NIC ports to stop working but still be present.


Um... If the patch isn't causing issues with other network controllers yet it's causing issues with one particular network controller I can't say that the blame should be on Microsoft, the blame should be on the manufacturer of the one network controller that _is_ having issues. Perhaps it's a driver issue. If it is, it should be up to the manufacturer to fix it.



thedukesd1 said:


> The problem might be easier to notice on older AMD cpu due to their lower singlethread performance compared to Intel cpu.


Exactly. We've known for years that AMD lagged behind that of Intel performance. Perhaps, unfortunately for all of us, the fixes for recent processor exploits have brought about an even wider gap on particularly older AMD chips to make for a performance gap that's even worse than it was before.


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## Deleted member 178884 (Jul 18, 2018)

Ouch - my celron j1900 4th pc didn't take such a bad hit over time and still stable and semi fast.


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## trparky (Jul 18, 2018)

We knew that this kind of situation may come about, perhaps we just didn't know how bad the situation would be. But, there's no use in crying about it. Upgrade and move on, that's all we can do.


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## hat (Jul 18, 2018)

trparky said:


> Um... If the patch isn't causing issues with other network controllers yet it's causing issues with one particular network controller I can't say that the blame should be on Microsoft, the blame should be on the manufacturer of the one network controller that _is_ having issues. Perhaps it's a driver issue. If it is, it should be up to the manufacturer to fix it.
> 
> 
> Exactly. We've known for years that AMD lagged behind that of Intel performance. Perhaps, unfortunately for all of us, the fixes for recent processor exploits have brought about an even wider gap on particularly older AMD chips to make for a performance gap that's even worse than it was before.



Bulldozer may be a turd, but atom is a bigger turd, at least when comparing these two chips specifically. The bulldozer is the faster chip. Just because bulldozer was bad in general doesn't mean it's okay for this patch to murder its performance.


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## Vayra86 (Jul 18, 2018)

trparky said:


> Um... If the patch isn't causing issues with other network controllers yet it's causing issues with one particular network controller I can't say that the blame should be on Microsoft, the blame should be on the manufacturer of the one network controller that _is_ having issues. Perhaps it's a driver issue. If it is, it should be up to the manufacturer to fix it.
> 
> 
> Exactly. We've known for years that AMD lagged behind that of Intel performance. Perhaps, unfortunately for all of us, the fixes for recent processor exploits have brought about an even wider gap on particularly older AMD chips to make for a performance gap that's even worse than it was before.



Stop this nonsense man, that A9 runs almost 3x the clocks of the Atom that has almost no perf loss. IPC gaps even as high as 100% wont make the Atom faster. Also, bulldozer at high clocks was on the level of a Sandy Bridge at 3~3.6 Ghz so the gap really isnt that huge as you make it out to be.


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## Kursah (Jul 18, 2018)

trparky said:


> Um... If the patch isn't causing issues with other network controllers yet it's causing issues with one particular network controller I can't say that the blame should be on Microsoft, the blame should be on the manufacturer of the one network controller that _is_ having issues. Perhaps it's a driver issue. If it is, it should be up to the manufacturer to fix it.



Feel free to to take a moment to go back and re-read what I shared from Continuum's statement in my last post that you quoted only a part of. In fact I suggest you not only do that, but also invest some time in researching the actual issue I posted about more before assuming and finger pointing. 

Let's get that cleared up and be on the same page shall we? That'll make the conversation more useful and constructive all around. 

The issue is that that OEM.inf for the NIC driver gets removed during the patching process. That's not a vendor issue as it was there prior to the patch being applied, that's clearly a Microsoft problem.

Here's a little more information on the KB4103718 from April 2018 as well: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...c2vbSZcklNyQtNpXWzwe_1yxJdeybaVsMRO1beI3mEz74

From the notes in that very link:



> There is an issue with Windows and a third-party software that is related to a missing file (_oem<number>.inf_). Because of this issue, after you apply this update, the network interface controller will stop working.



That's not directly related to the issue @RejZoR is dealing with though, and is starting to veer off topic, so let's stop that here. Feel free to PM me if you want to discuss this part of the topic further. The reason I posted it is for evidence of Microsoft's 2018 patching struggles and that there's some damn good reasons to suspect that the OP has really found updates that are causing real-world performance issues for him.

Sure the easy knee-jerk reaction is to say "get better hardware"...but the point is before those patches, he didn't have to, because performance was fine for the use case presented. And with more bugged patches coming out, brute forcing performance by throwing money at better hardware is not only an incorrect answer for many, but not necessarily within responsible budget or use needs. Let's keep that in mind too and try to understand and respect that.



trparky said:


> We knew that this kind of situation may come about, perhaps we just didn't know how bad the situation would be. But, there's no use in crying about it. Upgrade and move on, that's all we can do.



You can cease with these kinds of posts and tone altogether on TPU's forums from now on that contain any derogatory, flaming or trolling comments now. Help, move on, or I'll assist you with that.

This goes for everyone, but @bogmali already stated that today. We won't state it again, folks will earn points and thread bans.


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## trparky (Jul 18, 2018)

Vayra86 said:


> A9 runs almost 3x the clocks of the Atom


But we all know that GHz isn't all that, it's what you can do with those GHz that really matters; hence the term IPC.


Kursah said:


> You can cease with these kinds of posts and tone altogether


OK, I apologize. I didn't intend for that to be taken the way it was taken, I meant it to be more in jest than seriously. I meant it to be in joke, funny, but certainly not how it was taken. I certainly did not mean it to be trolling.


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## Vayra86 (Jul 18, 2018)

trparky said:


> But we all know that GHz isn't all that, it's what you can do with those GHz that really matters; hence the term IPC.



No, its simple math. Code takes clock cycles to execute and IPC is the amount of code you can execute per clock cycle. More Ghz alleviates a lower IPC. Never been any different. IPC is not some magical bean. There was at most a 30% (40? Either way...) IPC gap between Bulldozer and Sandy, so 2,5x higher clocks easily counter that.

Sorry for stressing that point, I'm just allergic to misinformation and facts blown out of proportion. Rejzor should not have the performance he's got based on the CPU he is using, something else is amiss. Blanket statements help nobody.

I mean for once the bloke has a valid point here. And its quite intriguing too to see such a tremendous performance drop.


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## trparky (Jul 18, 2018)

Yes, and I understand that point very well. You can have a very fast clocked processor but if it's inefficient in terms of getting actual work done it doesn't matter how fast the processor is clocked, it will be beaten by a lower clocked processor that's more efficient. Case in point... the Pentium Prescott. That was a dog of a processor that was easily beat by a lower clocked AMD Althon 64 processor. Back then, AMD could practically pull rabbits out of hats with how efficient their processors were when compared to that of Intel. Unfortunately for AMD, Conroe came out and positively wiped the floor with AMD.


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## GoldenX (Jul 18, 2018)

Atoms are slower than Jaguars (AM1) at the same clocks, so that already makes them slower than any Bulldozer variant.


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## hat (Jul 18, 2018)

GoldenX has it right. Just because it's AMD doesn't automatically mean shit, and Intel doesn't automatically mean awesome. You can be brand loyal, or even a fanboy, and that's one thing, but facts are still facts and atom is still a slow, low power chip and any bulldozer (should) wipe the floor with it. There's clearly something wrong with that patch that crippled the bulldozer chip in a way it shouldn't have.


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## R-T-B (Jul 19, 2018)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Because the attack has to come from an administrator account



This is also news to me.  Citation?




altcapwn said:


> Atom < AMD APUs, he doesn't mean that Intel is worse than AMD. Atom is a lower spec part than AMD Apu's. His point was that lower spec CPUs has less performance hit than higher spec CPUs, AMD vs Intel has nothing to do here. But I guess it's because the performance hits can be count in percentage.



Spectre also doesn't affect atom at all, hence no slowdown.  How fast people lose control with the facts...


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 19, 2018)

R-T-B said:


> This is also news to me. Citation?


The Spectre/Meltdown site details this in several ways;
https://meltdownattack.com/
This one is also good, if more simplistic;
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3...hat-they-are-how-they-work-whats-at-risk.html


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## GoldenX (Jul 19, 2018)

R-T-B said:


> Spectre also doesn't affect atom at all, hence no slowdown.  How fast people lose control with the facts...



Only old first gen Atoms are immune, new ones, including Celeron and Pentium Silver are affected.

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/list-of-cpus-most-likely-immune-to-spectre/123128


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## R-T-B (Jul 19, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> The Spectre/Meltdown site details this in several ways;
> https://meltdownattack.com/
> This one is also good, if more simplistic.



I'm aware.  None of these sites indicate an administrator account requirement.



GoldenX said:


> Only old first gen Atoms are immune, new ones, including Celeron and Pentium Silver are affected.
> 
> https://forum.level1techs.com/t/list-of-cpus-most-likely-immune-to-spectre/123128



Ah yes, that'd be right.  They added speculative execution to atom.  Always thinking atom = first gen in my head.

Pretty sure the atom in question is first gen, no?

EDIT:  No, it certainly isn't.  Ok then.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 19, 2018)

R-T-B said:


> I'm aware. None of these sites indicate an administrator account requirement.


Not directly. It is implied as most of what needs to be run seems to require admin to execute. Could be incorrect on that.


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## trparky (Jul 19, 2018)

OK, correct me if I'm wrong but how can a patch be causing these issues? A benchmark tests the processor for raw performance so technically the OS shouldn't matter unless of course the thread scheduler got seriously messed up but if that were the case we'd be having a lot more people complaining.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 19, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> The Spectre/Meltdown site details this in several ways;
> https://meltdownattack.com/





> Which cloud providers are affected by Meltdown?
> Cloud providers which use Intel CPUs and Xen PV as virtualization without having patches applied. Furthermore, cloud providers without *real hardware virtualization*, relying on containers that share one kernel, such as Docker, LXC, or OpenVZ are affected.


Spectre (at least 1.0) and Meltdown are both read-only exploits (Intel revealed Spectre 1.1 may also be able to write).  These things are only hazards to systems already infected with malware.  Again, it poses a much greater risk on cloud platforms where sensitive data is constantly being thrown around on the same hardware for different customers.

Of all the data your average user CPU shovels, how much of it is actually sensitive?  I'd wage something like 0.00000001%.  Good luck trying to capture that without the user getting cranky that the computer is slow and quits using it.




trparky said:


> OK, correct me if I'm wrong but how can a patch be causing these issues? A benchmark tests the processor for raw performance so technically the OS shouldn't matter unless of course the thread scheduler got seriously messed up but if that were the case we'd be having a lot more people complaining.


Because it flushes the caches parodically so there's little there to snoop on.  Every time the cache flushes mid process, the processor has to rebuild the cache to proceed.  That means lost CPU cycles.


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## R-T-B (Jul 19, 2018)

FordGT90Concept said:


> These things are only hazards to systems already infected with malware.



Or any remote execute code exploit, of which there are many.


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## trparky (Jul 19, 2018)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Because it flushes the caches parodically so there's little there to snoop on. Every time the cache flushes mid process, the processor has to rebuild the cache to proceed. That means lost CPU cycles.


OK then... that's explains PCID.


> Flushing of the TLB can be an important security mechanism for memory isolation between processes to ensure a process can't access data stored in memory pages of another process. Memory isolation is especially critical during switches between the privileged operating system kernel process and the user processes - as was highlighted by the Meltdown security vulnerability. Mitigation strategies such as kernel page-table isolation (KPTI) rely heavily on performance-impacting TLB flushes and benefit greatly from hardware-enabled selective TLB entry management such as PCID (Process-Context Identifiers).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_lookaside_buffer#Address-space_switch


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## Solaris17 (Jul 19, 2018)

R-T-B said:


> Or any remote execute code exploit, of which there are many.



you cant control meltdown or spectre though. you are simply reading the memory address registers. I think a big issue (socially) with these exploits is for some reason the majority of the commuity is under the impression that when you run

Specrevirus.exe

its going to output

Waiting for credentials to pass CPU memory registers.....
Complete!

Facebook Login: Solaris17
Password: Awesomesauce1!

NSA Login: Solaris17
Pssword: lolhakz

The reality is these explaits are a big deal from an Acedemic standpoint because they are lessons about security foundations. The reality of reading 48bits of raw memory registers will look a little something like this in a print out


Wfc45Sa7H90;.@D%ff$7)98kiq!13cvBAZXCP&^f@1sFwbfG

its complete jibberish. with no context its almost impossible to even differentiate what you are looking at. even in plain text. You could MAYBE catch a word in the middle of the string like "Penguin" but you have no idea what is correlates too in anyway. Not to mention the complexity of the exploit makes it something that a normal person would even encounter incredibly rare since the leak needs to be primed. And even if someone was leaking info it would take the attacker an extraordinary amount of skill as WELL AS OTHER KNOWN environmental variables to make sense of any of the data.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 19, 2018)

Well I think this is counted as a bug and should be reported to Microsoft, because if removing the patch fixes the problem it is software not hardware at this point, plus anything from 2011/2012 tech is still pretty common whether desktop or laptop.

So this thread to me has been dragged on enough.


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## trparky (Jul 19, 2018)

Has anyone thought about disabling the mitigations against Spectre and Meltdown? If that solves the issue then the mitigations are at fault.


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## Solaris17 (Jul 19, 2018)

trparky said:


> Has anyone thought about disabling the mitigations against Spectre and Meltdown? If that solves the issue then the mitigations are at fault.



This. and in reality I dont see how it wouldnt be. Literally the Spectre and Meltdown white papers state they affect all arc types. Like I do not understand the confusion.

https://spectreattack.com/spectre.pdf

https://meltdownattack.com/meltdown.pdf

Excerpts from both.

Meltdown


> 6.4 Limitations on ARM and AMD We also tried to reproduce the Meltdown bug on several ARM and AMD CPUs. However, we did not manage to successfully leak kernel memory with the attack described in Section 5, neither on ARM nor on AMD. The reasons for this can be manifold. First of all, our implementation might simply be too slow and a more optimized version might succeed. For instance, a more shallow out-of-order execution pipeline could tip the race condition towards against the data leakage. Similarly, if the processor lacks certain features, e.g., no re-order buffer, our current implementation might not be able to leak data. However, for both ARM and AMD, the toy example as described in Section 3 works reliably, indicating that out-of-order execution generally occurs and instructions past illegal memory accesses are also performed.



Spectre


> We have empirically verified the vulnerability of several Intel processors to Spectre attacks, including Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell, Skylake, and Kaby Lake processors. We have also verified the attack’s applicability to AMD Ryzen CPUs. Finally, we have also successfully mounted Spectre attacks on several ARM-based Samsung and Qualcomm processors found in popular mobile phones



The patches and firmware fixes target the reading of (switching to) private kernel memory and the CPU branch prediction mechanisms. We are far beyond who got exploited first and who is moe at risk. The fact is all CPU arc types have used these methods for the past 10 years and as such the mitigation in place slow them.

I would need someone to ELI5 if they are not affected with any kind of multi core/multithread system.


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## R-T-B (Jul 19, 2018)

Solaris17 said:


> you cant control meltdown or spectre though.



Yep.  Not a virus itself, just a tool in a malware writers toolbox.  Or a remote exploiters, or whatever.



Solaris17 said:


> its complete jibberish. with no context its almost impossible to even differentiate what you are looking at. even in plain text.



Agreed.  I compared it to being dropped on a random street on earth, and trying to figure out where you are, instantly.  It is quite the challenge.



trparky said:


> Has anyone thought about disabling the mitigations against Spectre and Meltdown? If that solves the issue then the mitigations are at fault.



Several people.  I run a hardened system so I don't bother with such measures but it's probably just fine to go that route.


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## RejZoR (Jul 19, 2018)

trparky said:


> OK, correct me if I'm wrong but how can a patch be causing these issues? A benchmark tests the processor for raw performance so technically the OS shouldn't matter unless of course the thread scheduler got seriously messed up but if that were the case we'd be having a lot more people complaining.



The thing is, this is a living room laptop that is mostly used by my mom, I only use it when I'm around. So, the thing kept updating itself and was on build 1803 already. I came using it and it was dreadfully slow. So slow that I started researching because there is just NO way a very capable CPU becomes so out of date in just 6 months. And research led me downgrading back to 1709 and because even that one was lagging badly and I know it didn't when I manually installed it back in autumn 2017, I was then testing further and figured out these updates all the way back to KB4338825 were causing this shit. 3 different individual updates causing the same absurd slowdown.

So, given how much effort it required from me to figure it out, for 90% of users, this is the new performance state and they'll think it's a new normal. My mom certainly wasn't complaining that it got any slower even though it's so slow I almost threw it out the window before debugging the issue. And then take into account the scope it might affect (AMD users) and the number probably isn't large enough for you to notice massive outrage by the users online...


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## GoldenX (Jul 19, 2018)

Put a copy of LTSB, disable Windows Update, and enjoy.
Or better, show your mother where the browser is on Ubuntu and get even more performance from it.


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## AlwaysHope (Jul 19, 2018)

RejZoR said:


> .... And then take into account the scope it might affect (AMD users) and the number probably isn't large enough for you to notice massive outrage by the users online...



Considering AMD cpu 2012-2017 worldwide, but currently barely 25% market up to Q3 17', 2018 stats not available from this source Link
It's no surprise the outcry is not as loud as owners of Intel cpu.


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## RejZoR (Jul 19, 2018)

GoldenX said:


> Put a copy of LTSB, disable Windows Update, and enjoy.
> Or better, show your mother where the browser is on Ubuntu and get even more performance from it.



The laptop has licensed Windows 10 on it so the outrage is even bigger because of it. The thing came with the OS and the very same OS is screwing it up. I'm not gonna install Ubuntu on it, I want what I paid for to work correctly.


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## Deleted member 163934 (Jul 19, 2018)

Until MS acknowledge that there is a problem with those patches  (and possible other patches in the future) and fix the issues or at least no longer offer the patches to affected systems the only solution (taking into consideration that you don't look to want to change to another OS) is to not install those patches.

Report the problem to Microsoft if you haven't done it already. Maybe they will investigate it...

Still wonder what was the cpu freq during the single thread bench. As I already said when I edited my other post if I see a hit in single thread performance I expect a hit in multi thread performance too, but in this case only the single thread takes a huge hit while the multi thread doesn't. Ofc it can be cpu-z that for some reasons no longer play well with whatever MS changed with those patches...


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## RejZoR (Jul 19, 2018)

I wasn't checking the CPU clock during the actual CPU-Z test, but frequency was the first thing I checked when I experienced this massive slowdown and it was still clocking to 3.6GHz when launching a program or stuff. Unless, like you said, the frequency reporting is also broken. In which case I can't really do or know what's going on.


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## Frick (Jul 19, 2018)

Kursah said:


> The reason I posted it is for evidence of Microsoft's 2018 patching struggles and that there's some damn good reasons to suspect that the OP has really found updates that are causing real-world performance issues for him.



This is getting a bit tangential, but while I really like Win10 MS has really dropped the ball many timed during its lifetime when it comes to updates. We have the webcam thing (leaving millions of webcams practically unusable), the audio reconfiguration thing (preventing soundcards to be accesses by mixing/recording software) and that bad AMD related update that made some laptops  (including one I had) unable to boot even in safe mode (yes, really), effectively bricking the thing unless you had a non-up to date installation media laying around. The updates largely work well, and again i really like Win10, but sometimes one get the feeling that customers now are the QA teams for enterprise.


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## GoldenX (Jul 19, 2018)

RejZoR said:


> The laptop has licensed Windows 10 on it so the outrage is even bigger because of it. The thing came with the OS and the very same OS is screwing it up. I'm not gonna install Ubuntu on it, I want what I paid for to work correctly.


It's not like the OS-less version is cheaper. It's Microsoft, if you are going to suffer with it, at least make it bearable.


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## RejZoR (Jul 19, 2018)

I generally like Windows 10. It's alright, but they really screwed it up badly with this one.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 19, 2018)

thedukesd1 said:


> Until MS acknowledge that there is a problem with those patches  (and possible other patches in the future) and fix the issues or at least no longer offer the patches to affected systems the only solution (taking into consideration that you don't look to want to change to another OS) is to not install those patches.
> 
> Report the problem to Microsoft if you haven't done it already. Maybe they will investigate it...
> 
> Still wonder what was the cpu freq during the single thread bench. As I already said when I edited my other post if I see a hit in single thread performance I expect a hit in multi thread performance too, but in this case only the single thread takes a huge hit while the multi thread doesn't. Ofc it can be cpu-z that for some reasons no longer play well with whatever MS changed with those patches...




They won't do anything till it affects their stocks.

Once ms went with Windows as a service model, thats when they screwed up. Sorry you can bash me all you want but I'm sticking to W7.


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## newtekie1 (Jul 19, 2018)

Frick said:


> that bad AMD related update that made some laptops (including one I had) unable to boot even in safe mode (yes, really), effectively bricking the thing unless you had a non-up to date installation media laying around.



That didn't just affect laptops, it hit AMD based desktops too.  It was related to the chipset and AMD's incorrect documentation on some of their older chipsets(so not 100% microsoft's fault).  However, it does lend more evidence to the next point.



Frick said:


> The updates largely work well, and again i really like Win10, but sometimes one get the feeling that customers now are the QA teams for enterprise.



You are absolutely correct here.  They layed off most of their software testing team back in 2014.  Then in 2015 admitted that for their business branch they have a delayed update release branch they can use, so that "enterprises will be able to receive feature updates after their quality and application compatibility has been assessed in the consumer market".  Microsoft has been pretty clear that the consumer is now their beta testers and they don't even do anything more than the very basic testing on their updates before release.



RejZoR said:


> I generally like Windows 10. It's alright, but they really screwed it up badly with this one.



Yes, the Microsoft definitely messed up with the patches for you system, but unfortunately that is one of the consequences of buying an computer based on an un-popular extremely low performance processor.  I doubt there is anyone in their organization that is running that processor, so no one to test the patch until it is released.  And even after it is released, very likely such a small user base that Microsoft probably doesn't get any feedback on issues(and will likely devote no resources to fixes either).

I mean, yes, the processor has been hand optimized since Bulldozer, but those optimizations were just polishing a turd.  They didn't make the architecture suddenly awesome.  The fact is the A9-9420, even with the optimizations, is still slower in single core performance than the original Bulldozer based FX-8120.  It's barely faster than a Kabini 5350 actually.

This really isn't a fault of yours, and if the processor is fast enough for you that's great.  I've certainly got a few low power low performance processors too that fit my needs just fine.  I'm just trying to give you some insight on why the A9-94290 isn't a popular or widely used processor.  And you can say "well it's faster than XYZ Intel" but that doesn't matter, people still buy something just because it says Intel, so Intel's low power processors are in use a lot more than AMD's, and get more attention from Microsoft because of it.

Now, I'd say your best bet would be to create a discussion on the Microsoft Community forums about your issues: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/

Given the small user base with your processor, I bet they would be happy to hear some feedback from someone with that processor willing to give feedback.


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## qubit (Jul 19, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> Yes, the Microsoft definitely messed up with the patches for you system, but unfortunately that is one of the consequences of buying an computer based on an un-popular extremely low performance processor. I doubt there is anyone in their organization that is running that processor, so no one to test the patch until it is released. And even after it is released, very likely such a small user base that Microsoft probably doesn't get any feedback on issues(and will likely devote no resources to fixes either).
> 
> *I mean, yes, the processor has been hand optimized since Bulldozer, but those optimizations were just polishing a turd. They didn't make the architecture suddenly awesome. The fact is the A9-9420, even with the optimizations, is still slower in single core performance than the original Bulldozer based FX-8120. It's barely faster than a Kabini 5350 actually.*
> 
> ...


Dammit nt, I wanna play around with that CPU just for the craptasticness factor!


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## newtekie1 (Jul 19, 2018)

qubit said:


> Dammit nt, I wanna play around with that CPU just for the craptasticness factor!



The thing is, it probably isn't terrible for day to day basic use.  I use an N2930 daily, and while it is definitely noticeably slower than some of my other machines, I think a normal person that hadn't experienced my other faster computers would probably be just fine using it(and to compare it to the A8-9420 get ~80 points in the single threaded CPU-Z benchmark).  The only time my N2930 gets choppy is when when I'm browsing netflix.


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## qubit (Jul 19, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> The thing is, it probably isn't terrible for day to day basic use.  I use an N2930 daily, and while it is definitely noticeably slower than some of my other machines, I think a normal person that hadn't experienced my other faster computers would probably be just fine using it(and to compare it to the A8-9420 get ~80 points in the single threaded CPU-Z benchmark).  The only time my N2930 gets choppy is when when I'm browsing netflix.


Yeah, boring internet and email doesn't tax low end systems much. I'd love to add something like a GTX 1080 Ti to it, lots of RAM (to remove RAM bottleneck excuse) and then enjoy the slideshow when a demanding game is run on it, lol.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 20, 2018)

R-T-B said:


> Or any remote execute code exploit, of which there are many.


Which requires admin authority, thus...

Again though, incredibly tough to pull off.


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## trparky (Jul 20, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> Which requires admin authority, thus...
> 
> Again though, incredibly tough to pull off.


Unless of course you're running as admin 24/7. Yes, we've been told not to run as admin/root for years now but there are those who still do.

I don't though.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 20, 2018)

trparky said:


> Unless of course you're running as admin 24/7.


No, even then remote exploitation as a serious pain and nearly impossible with a properly configured firewall.


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## trparky (Jul 20, 2018)

Firewall? Usually I just depend on my NAT router.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 20, 2018)

trparky said:


> Firewall? Usually I just depend on my NAT router.


A good measure for sure, however a kernel-level software firewall that *is not* built-in to Windows is always better.


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## hat (Jul 20, 2018)

I'm no security expert, but as I understand it, a hardware firewall (router) should be enough for most users. Even if someone knows your IP, they can't just dump something on your system. There has to be an open door first... and that's what firewalls do basically, is manage those "doors". Ever try to host any type of server, game server or otherwise? Nobody can connect unless you deliberately open that specific door for them by explicitly forwarding that specific port the server is using to the specific computer the server is running on. Most hacks start with social engineering of some type (tricking a user into running some type of malicious application), or some malicious actor with physical access to the system. To truly be targeted by some cyber assassin who can silently invade your system is a rare thing. If someone can bust your router's firewall, I'm not so sure running a software firewall on your machines locally is going to save you. That said, antivirus software is still a good idea, if anything to at least guard against the possibility that a website you visit may be compromised with malicious ads or something...


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## R-T-B (Jul 20, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> Which requires admin authority, thus...



No.  Not all remotely executed code is run as admin.



> Again though, incredibly tough to pull off



Agreed.


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## trparky (Jul 20, 2018)

So really, can any one of us just simply turn off the protections and be relatively safe?


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## GoldenX (Jul 20, 2018)

Do you have nuke codes on your computer? Does Trump?


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 20, 2018)

Nope and nope.  The nuclear codes are exclusively in the "football" on 5"x3" note card.  Scour the entire internet and you won't find them.


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## Deleted member 163934 (Jul 20, 2018)

hat said:


> I'm no security expert, but as I understand it, a hardware firewall (router) should be enough for most users. Even if someone knows your IP, they can't just dump something on your system. There has to be an open door first... and that's what firewalls do basically, is manage those "doors". Ever try to host any type of server, game server or otherwise? Nobody can connect unless you deliberately open that specific door for them by explicitly forwarding that specific port the server is using to the specific computer the server is running on. Most hacks start with social engineering of some type (tricking a user into running some type of malicious application), or some malicious actor with physical access to the system. To truly be targeted by some cyber assassin who can silently invade your system is a rare thing. If someone can bust your router's firewall, I'm not so sure running a software firewall on your machines locally is going to save you. That said, antivirus software is still a good idea, if anything to at least guard against the possibility that a website you visit may be compromised with malicious ads or something...



IPv6 makes the firewall in your router become 0 in most cases. If your pc gets a real IPv6 then your pc can happy be targeted from the internet and your router firewall will do 0 against it.

In IPv6 case your pc firewall is important.

In IPv4 case due to NAT you need to forward ports or use UPNP ( upnp is a security bomb if you ask me, sure you don't have to deal with the port forward (that can be a nightmare in some cases) but in same time it can happy open ports and make your pc vulnerable; and I talk here about proper UPNP implementation in the router firmware, there have been an army of cases with awfull UPNP implementations).
Even so, unless the manufacturer of your router is a nice one that keep publishing updates for your router, you will end up vulnerable at some point. Ofc you have something like OpenWRT that might work on your router, or well you can build a pc that will be used as a router and run linux on it and happy keep it updated.

L.E.: Keep in mind that your router will have to deal with atacks from inside also, it is possible for a webpage that you load on your browser to try to access your router and the worst part is that there are routers with the latest firmware that are vulnerable to such attacks... but when you see routers produced in 2018 that use in their firmware stuff not updated for years, probably is very hard to pull the latest version and compile it, but well why not use kernel 2.6 in 2018 (if they didn't bothered to update the rest of the stuff you can bet they didn't bothered to backport the fixes from latest still supported kernels...). Compared to average user they should have access to prototypes with a socketed flash chip that can be easily removed and flashed if something goes bad with the firmware, and this is actually a crappy way to test it (still a good enough), in normal conditions they should have a full software emulator (compared to a pc emulator a router emulator is considerable simpler) for that router and test it on the emulator first.
The ones guilty for the botnets are the routers/IoT manufacturers that don't care about the security. One day someone will build a botnet big enough to take down the entire internet and if they will catch him/her/them you might find out that the answer to the question "why you did it?" is "because I/we could do it and because the manufacturers of those things don't care about security".


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## EsaT (Jul 20, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> Microsoft has been pretty clear that the consumer is now their beta testers and they don't even do anything more than the very basic testing on their updates before release.


Haven't we been beta testers already for long time, like with Vista etc?
Now we're more like alpha testers.
Though some of the security holes of original XP can be put into that alpha testing category...


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 20, 2018)

The op fixed his problem by purging with extreme vigilance.

This feels like goin in circles, kicking a dead horse, tinfoil hat thread now.

Signing off
/thread


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