[Question] Windows 10 Update (Meltdown & Spectre Patch) - Did the updates reduce performance on older CPUs like we were lead to believe it would?

[Euphoria]

Hi everyone, I'm looking for some insight, info, and experience regarding the Meltdown and Spectre Windows 10 updates.

I'm still running an old gaming system as nothing has blown me away with how amazing it is as yet, although the rumored 4000 series Ryzen and RTX cards look like that could change, but we will see. Anyway, I'm still running a 3770k OC @4.9GHz, 16GB 2133MHz, and a GTX 1080 with a decent OC too.

Because of the potential huge drop in performance that was being reported when the Meltdown and Spectre patches were being rolled out, I disabled Win 10 auto-update permanently using a registry edit and I've stayed on version 1803 from April 2018 as I didn't want to take a huge hit to performance which might have forced me to upgrade when I didn't want to yet. I'm incredibly glad I did wait after hearing all the nightmares people were having with the updates in late 2018 to 2019.
 

Well, with a potential full system upgrade likely coming at the end of the year, I figured I should update and get used to the new Windows 10 features, but before I do that I wanted to find out IF these huge performance drops did materialise or if it was blown out of proportion. I've found some videos and benchmarks of people testing the pre-patch versions vs the post-patch versions but that's with new modern hardware, I can't find any real testing done on older systems so I thought I would ask to see if people here had seen or read something about it, or if people had first hand experience themselves after updating?

Any and all info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Euphoria]

P.S. Oh, one more thing - is there a current Best version of Windows 10 to be on for gaming? I haven't kept up to date with the versions so I don't know which ones were the broken updates that caused all of the deleting files and instability problems.

[Applefreak]

When you google it, there is a list of KB updates for those patches, you can remove them after the fact if you like. The ones already baked into the newer updates don't seem to decrease performance much or at all. Not updating the OS makes you more vulnerable to other attacks like common viruses and malware.

AFAIK the patches have been optimized and the decrease in performance has been mostly mitigated at this point.

As for gaming performance, the current version does perform equally as good as the previous one. I have not compared them that far back though.

[Radium_Angel]

32 minutes ago, Euphoria said:

Best version of Windows 10 to be on for gaming?

Makes no difference really. But if you want the one with the least spyware baked in, LTSB/LTSC (unsure which is more current) it's got most of the bullshit removed.

If you want to be brave and try it, Windows 10 embedded , supposed to be an ultra-stripped down, no BS baked in, super lean OS.

Whether it makes any difference for gaming, remains to be seen

[Euphoria]

40 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Makes no difference really. But if you want the one with the least spyware baked in, LTSB/LTSC (unsure which is more current) it's got most of the bullshit removed.

If you want to be brave and try it, Windows 10 embedded , supposed to be an ultra-stripped down, no BS baked in, super lean OS.

Whether it makes any difference for gaming, remains to be seen

Oops, I didn't mean to say "best version for for gaming" I just meant which version is the current newest that isn't broken and won't cause my PC to implode and/or delete my dog.
Thanks for the info though, when I upgrade and do a fresh install I will look into those as I used to love my old stripped out bare-bones Windows 7 build.

[Euphoria]

1 hour ago, Applefreak said:

When you google it, there is a list of KB updates for those patches, you can remove them after the fact if you like. The ones already baked into the newer updates don't seem to decrease performance much or at all. Not updating the OS makes you more vulnerable to other attacks like common viruses and malware.

AFAIK the patches have been optimized and the decrease in performance has been mostly mitigated at this point.

As for gaming performance, the current version does perform equally as good as the previous one. I have not compared them that far back though.

That's awesome, thank you. I didn't know the specific MD/Spec exploit patches could be removed, I assumed they would be hard-coded in. That is very helpful if I do notice a big hit to performance. I do understand what you mean by leaving me vulnerable, I normally would always stay fairly up to date, well, once an update has been out a while and tested so I know it won't brick my system, but as that system is literally only turned on when I want to game and only connects to Steam to DL game files, no work, no browsing, nothing, I took the risk to avoid the potential drop in performance.

Really appreciate that info, thanks.

[Radium_Angel]

7 minutes ago, Euphoria said:

I just meant which version is the current newest that isn't broken and won't cause my PC to implode and/or delete my dog.

Snerk...

 

It seems every new update breaks/deletes something important.

Comes from having no QA dept any more.

But don't mind me, I despise Win10 and flatly refuse to use it.

I'm one of those smug bastards that uses Windows 9.

 

But in all seriousness, the rapid pace of Windows versions, or point updates, (I think they are on 200-4 currently) pretty much guarantees you need to keep pace or risk the latest and greatest feature (or worse yet, support) not being on your system.

 

It's the Apple plan, "We support only to the last point release...upgrade or suffer"

 

 

[Radium_Angel]

4 minutes ago, Euphoria said:

I assumed they would be hard-coded in.

I don't think that can happen with software patches, but I was surprised that when the patches were applied to my system, I didn't notice any decline in performance and figured I was just lucky.

[Euphoria]

  

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

Snerk...

 

It seems every new update breaks/deletes something important.

Comes from having no QA dept any more.

But don't mind me, I despise Win10 and flatly refuse to use it.

I'm one of those smug bastards that uses Windows 9.

 

But in all seriousness, the rapid pace of Windows versions, or point updates, (I think they are on 200-4 currently) pretty much guarantees you need to keep pace or risk the latest and greatest feature (or worse yet, support) not being on your system.

 

It's the Apple plan, "We support only to the last point release...upgrade or suffer"

 

 

 

 

I completely understand. When Windows 10 first released and all the spyware data mining crap came to light, I also flat out refused to updowngrade to it. I stayed on Windows 7 as 8 was a bust, I had a beautiful ISO for 7 that I had stripped clean of crap over nearly 10 years. I stayed with it until 2018 when a game forced my hand, I was looking forward to playing this game since it was rumored to be in the making, I finally bought it and couldn't even install it as it required some system features and code that was introduced in Windows 8.
I spent literally weeks trying to find a work around, considered a dual boot just for this one game, tried bribing Bill Gates to mod my copy of Windows but his security just asked me to leave, bit rude if you ask me, but nothing worked. So, I bit the bullet and decided to move to Windows 10. My first experiences I must say were actually really good, once I'd spent 10-hours removing/disabling the CIA and/or lizard people spyware, it was bloated and slow compared to Windows 7 but still it seemed pretty good... that lasted about 6-months, then I stupidly installed some updates and everything went to 5h!t.

Anyway, I'm dribbling on so I'll shut up. Thanks for the info and advice, appreciate it.

[Euphoria]

So, I found (was told about) this app, InSpectre.

 

[Edit] It's a tiny self-contained app that can disable and enable the Spectre and Meltdown patches, so if your system performance takes a hit after installing the patches you can disable them to improve performance.
The creator of the app is Steve Gibson - software engineer. He's a well known and respected software engineer who hosted the Security Now podcast and runs GRC for those who don't know the name.

Edited September 18, 2020 by Euphoria
[Edit] I misunderstood what the app could do first time I read it - post is now corrected and accurate.

[Mark Kaine]

On 9/17/2020 at 11:49 AM, Euphoria said:

So, I found (was told about) this app, InSpectre.

 

It's a tiny self-contained app that can add the Spectre and Meltdown patches to Windows without needing to update Windows to a newer version that would normally include those patches, so someone if they wanted to could stay on a very old version of Windows but still be protected, or if you want to update Windows to a new or latest version the app can be used to remove the patches to improve performance.
The creator of the app is Steve Gibson - software engineer. He's a well known and respected software engineer who hosted the Security Now podcast and runs GRC for those who don't know the name.

err, that isn't what inspectre does to my knowledge.

 

what it does is*disable* or enable the spectre patches.

 

which means you must have installed these (from Microsoft) otherwise inspectre doesn't really work.

 

someone please correct me if I'm wrong but that's how I recall it to work.

[Euphoria]

2 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

err, that isn't what inspectre does to my knowledge.

 

what it does is*disable* or enable the spectre patches.

 

which means you must have installed these (from Microsoft) otherwise inspectre doesn't really work.

 

someone please correct me if I'm wrong but that's how I recall it to work.

Sorry my bad, you are completely correct, I misunderstood when first reading it and forgot to edit my post.