Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerabilities Patches – Performance Impact per age of PC

Meltdown, a specific processor vulnerability, has been "patched" by Microsoft last week. Software-based patch designed to hide an unresolved hardware problem without physically replacing affected processors comes with "adverse effects" in the form of performance penalties that are more or less perceptible, depending on the generation of the processor installed.

Expected to be improved as time goes by, the patches delivered for the Windows operating system seem to noticeably influence the PCs equipped with Intel processors since 2016, but the effects could be more pronounced in the case of PCs of the older generation, already limited in terms of processing power available.

• For Windows 10 PCs and Skylake / Kabylake or newer Intel processors, the performance drop, in the worst case, does not exceed several percents, and is virtually not noticeable to users (1-5%)
• For Windows 10 PCs and Haswell family (launched in 2015), or earlier generations, the performance drop can be over 10% in some situations, becoming noticeable to users
• The most affected are users who use Windows 8 or Windows 7, installed on PCs equipped with processors from 2015 or older. Here, the decrease in performance is generalized and can be seen in most of the actions performed
• The Windows Server platform, regardless of the processor generation used, shows significant slowdowns in applications that handle large volumes of data accessed in parallel, and their administrators are being advised to carefully evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of using the new security patches

Microsoft declared that it has resolved 41 of the 45 Windows editions affected by Meltdown and Specter vulnerabilities, and the rest will be getting the necessary patches soon. While others will follow it is clear that based on the CPU architecture and release, the newer CPUs are less affected in this regard. As if something thought to happen this way and just to suggest to consumers to buy new ones...a little bit too convenient for manufacturers. It seems that all big companies end up tricking the consumers as the gain enormous profit for thinks which are at the law border.