Friday, January 12th 2018
Intel Releases CPU Benchmarks with Meltdown and Spectre Mitigations
It's safe to say that there's one thing that you don't mess around with, and that's performance. Enthusiasts don't spend hundreds of dollars on a processor to watch it underperform. Given the complicated nature of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, Microsoft's so-called mitigations were bound to have an impact on processor performance. The million dollar question was: Just how much? The initial estimate was somewhere around 30%, but Intel, being optimistic as usual, expected the performance impact to be insignificant for the average user. They recently provided some preliminary benchmark results that looked quite convincing too. Well, let's take a look at their findings, shall we?
Intel measured the mitgations' impact on CPU performance using their 6th, 7th, and 8th Generation Intel Core processors but, more specifically, the i7-6700K, i7-7920HQ, i7-8650U, and i7-8700K. The preferred operating system used in the majority of the benchmarks was Windows 10, however, Windows 7 also made a brief appearance. Intel chose four key benchmarks for their testing. SYSmark 2014 SE evaluated CPU performance on an enterprise level simulating office productivity, data and financial analysis, and media creation. PC Mark 10, on the other hand, tested performance in real-world usage employing different workloads like web browsing, video conferencing, application start-up time, spreadsheets, writing, and digital content creation. 3DMark Sky Diver assessed CPU performance in a DirectX 11 gaming scenario. Lastly, WebXPRT 2015 measured system performance using six HTML5- and JavaScript-based workloads which include photo enhancement, organize album, stock option pricing, local notes, sales graphs, and explore DNA sequencing.
The SYSmark 2014 SE overall results showed a moderate decrease in CPU performance between 6% to 8% with the i7-6700K the being the most affected. System responsiveness took the biggest hit with performance dropping up to 21% on the i7-6700K. The Responsiveness scenario tested activities like application launches, application installation, web browsing with many tabs open, file copies, photo manipulation, and multi-tasking - all of which are heavily influenced by the type of storage. So, don't let that i7-6700K with the hard drive result fool you. PCMark 10 registered penalties in the range of 3% to 4% with the i7-7920HQ being least affected. We weren't surprised to see that the mitigations didn't affect gaming performance in 3DMark Sky Diver, since we had already done our own tests in 21 different games. Results from WebXPRT 2015 reveal performance drops between 5% to 10%.
Intel measured the mitgations' impact on CPU performance using their 6th, 7th, and 8th Generation Intel Core processors but, more specifically, the i7-6700K, i7-7920HQ, i7-8650U, and i7-8700K. The preferred operating system used in the majority of the benchmarks was Windows 10, however, Windows 7 also made a brief appearance. Intel chose four key benchmarks for their testing. SYSmark 2014 SE evaluated CPU performance on an enterprise level simulating office productivity, data and financial analysis, and media creation. PC Mark 10, on the other hand, tested performance in real-world usage employing different workloads like web browsing, video conferencing, application start-up time, spreadsheets, writing, and digital content creation. 3DMark Sky Diver assessed CPU performance in a DirectX 11 gaming scenario. Lastly, WebXPRT 2015 measured system performance using six HTML5- and JavaScript-based workloads which include photo enhancement, organize album, stock option pricing, local notes, sales graphs, and explore DNA sequencing.
56 Comments on Intel Releases CPU Benchmarks with Meltdown and Spectre Mitigations
link, cloudblogs.microsoft.com/microsoftsecure/2018/01/09/understanding-the-performance-impact-of-spectre-and-meltdown-mitigations-on-windows-systems/
it also make intel guilty of fraud being as they knew about it and kept quite.. least i recon it does..
trog
nl.hardware.info/nieuws/54908/windows-patches-voor-processorbug-leiden-tot-merkbaar-prestatieverlies-voor-intel-processors-ouder-dan-skylake
The best security experts in the world didn't think about this for a decade, what would have you expected from a handful of designers? As embarrassing, annoying and infuriating this is, you have to realize these things are unavoidable. The same way no software is without bugs, no hardware is immune either.
Sure, Intel "deliberately chose to ignore" it, but only after some third party told them about the problem. Still a lousy thing to do, but presumably Coffee Lake was too far in development (something that only makes sense from the business' point of view, not customer's).
And just to be clear: this is bad, this is not up for debate. The only issue I have is Liviu's "I hope they learn something from this and try to avoid it in the future" statement. This is such a complex setup, it's extremely hard to guard against. It's also probably why Intel decided they need to create an entire new division. But even so, I'm sure even more sophisticated attacks will be devised down the road. It's just how the security game is played.
Monday we be buildin! Cant wait.
As far as performance on my current (IvyB) rig; I do notice loading times have increased marginally across the board, that is the only effect in terms of gaming. Browser performance seems equal-ish to what it was. File system workloads do seem a little bit less snappy than they were. Basically most things connected to storage did take a little hit, it seems. Overall no dealbreakers to me.
I hope Intel get whats coming to them, but probably not like always.
It's still probably worth the 5-10% performance hit in my case, but it does at least make you ponder it. I'd bet a lot of home users out there opt not to apply it. There are loads of gamers out there still running older OS's and/or not patching, for smaller performance benefits than the hit this patch causes.
Everyone can speculate, but what we know at this point is Google only unearthed this through Project Zero.