Thanks for the heads-up.  Now at least if my machine turns into a dog next week I won't be pulling out what little is left of my hair.

supposedly it depends on what you are running. games are not affected that much... it's said.

i suppose of more interest is what intel is doing to fix this for future architectures.. and which ones will get the fix. too late for anything due in the next year or 2?

 Well i will probably never buy intel again. I bought my computer last year only to find it is going to slow down at least 15 percent. This is like intel processors not amd were to hot to overclock. Actually there shared caching was there only real advantage without it their archetecture werent good enough.

Amd is still like 2017 only intel is backwards. Im pissed to find out my k7 6700 sucks should of went amd. Intel you suck. I will never trust you again. I want my 1050$ back.

Double..

According to Intel its not valid..

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-cpu-bug-amd-performance,36213.html

heh. more vulnerabilities. the other one (spectre) affects amd too. though... the article is kinda confusing as it says amd is not vulnerable to meltdown which they label as variant 1 and 2, but then says amd is practically immune to 2 but will have to wait for microcode for variant 1 or recompile software with countermeasures.

ok.. the article got it mixed up.. variants 1 and 2 are spectre and meltdown is 3. hence amd immune for 3 but iffy on 1 and 2.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/intel_amd_arm_cpu_vulnerability/

though the last comment about cert recommend throwing away cpu sounds nonsense. if intel, amd et al were told of vulnerability last june, they ain't going to apply hardware fixes to previous or even current gen cpu. doubtful about upcoming gen. so whatever you buy any time soon is vulnerable. for your average home user that is... server and stuff have more choices, but do you see companies making wholesale changes like that and betting whatever they change to won't have other issues yet to crop up?

more info:

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/reading-privileged-memory-with-side.html

https://meltdownattack.com/

https://spectreattack.com/

last 2 links to same thing

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/3/16846784/microsoft-processor-bug-windows-10-fix

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seeing as for whatever reason this patch hasn't appeared for me yet on windows update... i manually downloaded it off ms catalogue - https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/home.aspx

just 1 thing.. make sure if you are using 3rd party antivirus/security suite, check if they are patched to be compatible with the update.. and obviously you grabbed the right version for the right os....

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4056892/windows-10-update-kb4056892

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4056898/windows-81-update-kb4056898

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4056897/windows-7-update-kb4056897

Benchmarks are slowly coming out. Games are hardly affected, since they make very few calls to the Kernel. However, anything that relies heavily on the Kernel - such as file I/O - suffers a big impact, so this will have a massive effect mostly on data centers. For everything else the impact should be fairly minimal.

The Windows patches are NOT out yet. The fixes should be a part of the next round of Windows updates though.

Linux developers have made it very clear what they thought of all of this (and Intel) when coming up with an acronym for the fix:

We came up with a list of technically correct acronyms:

User Address Space Separation, prefix uass_

Forcefully Unmap Complete Kernel With Interrupt Trampolines, prefix fuckwit_

but we are politically correct people so we settled for

Kernel Page Table Isolation, prefix kpti_

Linus, your call " />

you'll have to wait years i imagine for proper hardware fix. as for chromebook... (or chromeos) check

https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/7622138#chromeos

Ya, I'm starting to think that to a large extent most of us will only notice when we're online trying to talk to the workhorses - they'll be the one's struggling.

In this case, Intel itself [not AMD] released the news that its processors up to 10 years old had security flaws, and that it would release patches that may impact on performance by up to 50%.  Microsoft also released patches to fix the issue from an OS point of view.  However, AMD is not responsible for breaking the news.  Apparently, it was a couple of engineers at Google, who first informed Intel and Microsoft of the issue.

I know that if I were an Intel CPU owner from within that time frame, [which I am] I'd be mightily pissed at the huge performance hit, but I'd also be suspicious.... very suspicious.  I mean, why has this only come out now... a 10 year old flaw?  And why is it necessary for these CPUs to take a such a big performance hit when patched?  Does anybody else smell fish?

On another note, I'm so glad I went with an AMD Ryzen for my new build.  I had considered an Intel based rebuild, but as luck would have it, I decided against it due to cost considerations.... and my Ryzen 1700 does overclock very well, so performance won't be an issue. 

As for what I'm going to do about my i7 4970K, well I suppose it'll be a bit of wait and see.  Just because the patch has been issued, doesn't mean I have to apply it, and if I'm somehow forced to, well I'll check my options then.

It's like a 1% hit, people.  Check the people actually doing real benchmarks.