4 ms·

Intel has already had so many flaws and vulnerabilities that I think nothing will change. People would prefer to ignore the problem and do nothing because they

Intel has already had so many flaws and vulnerabilities that I think nothing will change. People would prefer to ignore the problem and do nothing because they don't want their businesses to implode.

metalliqaz 7y ago
I wish the updates for Spectre/Meltdown were optional on my Windows machine. They posed no real risk to my single-user gaming machine and the fixes had an unacceptable performance burden IMHO.
- swift532 7y ago
  Are you sure they are not optional? I remember disabling various security updates at the time, but unfortunately I wasn't testing whether performance in games was affected positively after removing them. I can only say that it felt as it had been faster, but I hadn't measured FPS.
  - metalliqaz 7y ago
    My understanding is that newer Windows version contain microcode updates for the processors, and once they are applied, they are in there for good.
    - mgiampapa 7y ago
      Microcode doesn't flash the CPU, it's loaded at boot time, you can remove it and disable the software mitigation.
- agloeregrets 7y ago
  Same on my Chromebook Pixel LS too. They were optional but now they added all kinds of additional mitigations and are also adding linux throttling and in the last 6 months or so I probably have gained ~60% compile time.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Do you not browse the web on that machine?
  - skierguy 7y ago
    There's a performance mode that Google has a support article for. Google exactly "Change your Chromebook’s performance setting", and you should see it. If lscpu still shows some offline cpus (let's say cpu 1 and 3 are offline), echo 1 >> /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu<1 or 3>/online. Run lscpu again, and you should see all CPUs online and 2 threads per core.
- mgiampapa 7y ago
  They are, you can disable them in the registry.
- jimmaswell 7y ago
  You can toggle/check mitigations with a program called InSpectre.
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  > They posed no real risk to my single-user gaming machine and the fixes had an unacceptable performance burden IMHO. Where are you seeing a performance burden? The spectre/meltdown patches had no impact to game performance: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-performance-meltdown-spectre-intel-amd,5457.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-performance-melt...

Intel has already had so many flaws and vulnerabilities that I think nothing will change. People would prefer to ignore the problem and do nothing because they don't want their businesses to implode.

metalliqaz 7y ago

I wish the updates for Spectre/Meltdown were optional on my Windows machine. They posed no real risk to my single-user gaming machine and the fixes had an unacceptable performance burden IMHO.

swift532 7y ago
Are you sure they are not optional? I remember disabling various security updates at the time, but unfortunately I wasn't testing whether performance in games was affected positively after removing them. I can only say that it felt as it had been faster, but I hadn't measured FPS.
- metalliqaz 7y ago
  My understanding is that newer Windows version contain microcode updates for the processors, and once they are applied, they are in there for good.
  - mgiampapa 7y ago
    Microcode doesn't flash the CPU, it's loaded at boot time, you can remove it and disable the software mitigation.
agloeregrets 7y ago
Same on my Chromebook Pixel LS too. They were optional but now they added all kinds of additional mitigations and are also adding linux throttling and in the last 6 months or so I probably have gained ~60% compile time.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Do you not browse the web on that machine?
- skierguy 7y ago
  There's a performance mode that Google has a support article for. Google exactly "Change your Chromebook’s performance setting", and you should see it. If lscpu still shows some offline cpus (let's say cpu 1 and 3 are offline), echo 1 >> /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu<1 or 3>/online. Run lscpu again, and you should see all CPUs online and 2 threads per core.
mgiampapa 7y ago
They are, you can disable them in the registry.
jimmaswell 7y ago
You can toggle/check mitigations with a program called InSpectre.
kllrnohj 7y ago
> They posed no real risk to my single-user gaming machine and the fixes had an unacceptable performance burden IMHO. Where are you seeing a performance burden? The spectre/meltdown patches had no impact to game performance: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-performance-meltdown-spectre-intel-amd,5457.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-performance-melt...