This should probably go into off topic but I think it deserves a wider audience simply because performance is a key subject with GG and this information as bearing on the subject.

A flaw in Intel microprocessors is leaving computers worldwide facing up to a 50% slowdown when performing particular tasks.

The flaw affects a mechanism that microprocessers use to perform tasks quickly.


It is the fix that will cause the slowdown, as developers try to prevent hackers taking advantage of the flaw.

"Some things will end up being twice as slow as they are today," Mr Ian Pratt, formerly a senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge, told Sky News - but not every process would be affected.

"You won't really notice it with web browsing and editing documents. It's an interesting one with gaming, because gaming is very graphics intensive, but most graphics these days don't involve systems calls.

"The overheard will be most noticeable on graphics games, but it's going to be quite low there."

People who work with graphing applications or large spreadsheets on their home computers will experience this processing slowdown, said Mr Pratt, but those browsing the web or mining Bitcoin would not.

Computer users are being urged to still apply updates to their computers, despite the potential slowdown.

A spokesperson for the National Cyber Security Centre told Sky News: "We are aware of reports about a potential flaw affecting some computer processors.

"At this stage there is no evidence of any malicious exploitation and patches are being produced for the major platforms.

"NCSC advises that all organisations and home users continue to protect their systems from threats by installing patches, as soon as they become available."
:: Technical Issue

Details of the flaw and how it might be exploited are being kept strictly under wraps while programmers rush to redesign operating systems including Windows and Linux to work around the bug.

The issue affects a process that computer chips use to work faster. The redesigns will leave computers performing much slower than they could if they were left vulnerable to attack.

Mr Pratt explained: "For about 20 years, all central processing units (CPUs) have used a technique called 'speculative execution' which is a way of getting better performance from the processor.




"You write your program, which is a list of statements that get turned into machine code for things for the CPU to do.

"Modern CPUs can look hundreds of instructions ahead in the program code for work to do, but some of these instructions - if they are a branch of the code - may never get executed.

"Work that the CPU does speculatively, before it is executed, stays hidden in a special layer between the CPU and the operating system called the kernel."

Researchers fear that the hardware flaw means that this work may not necessarily remain hidden and speculate that an attacker might be able to steal passwords or other key information from the computer.

"I wouldn't throw Intel under the bus on this," Mr Pratt added. "This is a class of attack called a 'sidechannel attack' which will affect many vendors.

"Operating system vendors are making fairly significant changes to work around this issue. This is going to be one of the most complex security updates any OS vendor has ever had to deliver."

He did not believe that any attack would necessarily allow an attacker to read a secret key directly from the kernel - but it could allow them to learn details about the kernel to support additional attacks.

"Primarily it's a problem for servers," said Mr Pratt.

Companies which offer large cloud-computing products such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft may be heavily affected.

Amazon and Google were not immediately able to offer comment.

Microsoft and Apple told Sky News they had no comment to offer.

Intel said in a statement that the flaw was not unique to Intel products and said it does not have the potential to "corrupt, modify or delete data".

original story here https://news.sky.com/story/computers-face-global-slowdown-due-to-flaw-in-intel-chips-11193992

I have AMD and Guru is still slow.

I read about that yesterday as well. In the article I read, it also said that the OS fixes would likely be applied across all systems, regardless of processor, so even AMD processors will feel the performance hit. Also, they haven't been applied yet, so it's not yet an issue.

Windows 10 PC's were automatically updated yesterday https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/3/16846784/microsoft-processor-bug-windows-10-fix

LOL, of course it was! I haven't noticed any performance hit yet, though, but haven't done anything really demanding.

Not mine it wasn't

I just checked and mine was last updated on December 1, so I haven't actually got it yet either.

Yeah, my last update was 21/12/17 (build 17063.1000)
Last check for updates 4/1/18 at 8am

Reliquia....

Ok so does GameGuru Run 50% faster for you now .. Or any improvement at all ?
If not I guess its not relevant to GG's speeds ..

Mine has not been updated the rollouts started yesterday in the US UK usually get them 24 - 48 hours later.



I think you have misunderstood the patch will make CPU's run up to 50% slower, I have just posted the article because I thought it would be interesting and so that people are informed.

I am sure Lee is also aware of this and will adjust the engine code accordingly I am 99% certain it uses 'prefetch code' which will be affected.

here is some more information on the flaw(s) which have now been named lol http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/intel-chip-problem-cpu-flaw-meltdown-spectre-vulnerability-patch-3365861


Intel Responds to Security Research Findings


Intel and other technology companies have been made aware of new security research describing software analysis methods that, when used for malicious purposes, have the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices that are operating as designed. Intel believes these exploits do not have the potential to corrupt, modify or delete data.

Recent reports that these exploits are caused by a “bug” or a “flaw” and are unique to Intel products are incorrect. Based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices — with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems — are susceptible to these exploits.

Intel is committed to product and customer security and is working closely with many other technology companies, including AMD, ARM Holdings and several operating system vendors, to develop an industry-wide approach to resolve this issue promptly and constructively. Intel has begun providing software and firmware updates to mitigate these exploits. Contrary to some reports, any performance impacts are workload-dependent, and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time.

Intel is committed to the industry best practice of responsible disclosure of potential security issues, which is why Intel and other vendors had planned to disclose this issue next week when more software and firmware updates will be available. However, Intel is making this statement today because of the current inaccurate media reports.

Check with your operating system vendor or system manufacturer and apply any available updates as soon as they are available. Following good security practices that protect against malware in general will also help protect against possible exploitation until updates can be applied.

Intel believes its products are the most secure in the world and that, with the support of its partners, the current solutions to this issue provide the best possible security for its customers.

"It really boils down to – as we said, and Intel pointed out – your workload. If you just play games on your PC, you will not see a slowdown because the software rarely jumps to the kernel during gameplay. Your game will be mostly talking to the graphics processor."

Won't affect me then.

Glad I waited a while on my next PC build, next one will most definitely be AMD based, 16 core thread ripper being the most likely candidate.

What is unique to intel is Meltdown which enables reading the kernel memory, this was not possible on amd systems.
Spectre was successfully performed on both intel and amd systems, it enables reading contents of memory from running programs.
The patches will close these leaks so that memory is isolated as it should be so that there is no access to sensitive information like passwords and keys.

What I was hinting at is that the 'performance hit' from the fix for Meltdown will only apply to Intel hardware, the wider Spectre issues will likely only affect server farms, assuming they can even 'fix' these issues that is.

Anyhow as I ONLY use my PC to play games, I'm unlikely to be bothered by any 'fix' anyway.

I'm just waiting to see what sort of panic this causes in the corporate management arena, they've already fitted physical USB disablers to all the hardware where they can't disable the ports from the OS and enforced a blanket policy of 'company only' USB sticks where they absolutely have to be used (with all sorts of daft rules governing their use!).

(actually having to use my special pass card to access the server room, then unlock the server cases with the special keys from the safe using the regularly changed safe code I had a really fun time putting little blanking plugs in all the USB sockets of all the Linux servers that I had previously disabled USB services on anyway! At least I got paid to do it I suppose.) (and before anyone points out that the last 'panic' didn't affect Linux, yeah I know, I think it's called irony or something)

Whoops my apologies ... Running around and only actually glanced and totally got it the wrong way round

It seems that this is indeed a problem on the side of intel, AMD might be vulnerable to spectre, but only the apu and fx models when eBPF JIT is enabled in linux.

Just priced up all the components for a new thread-ripper based system ... think I might wait a few months!

Thread-ripper? be sure to have a motherboard with a good power management.
It is a beast with a TDP of 180 watt.

As it needs a completely new mobo I would assume the £400 price for the mobo includes all the power management required!

Couldn't quite decide whether 2 GFX cards would be enough or should I max it out and stick 4 in there though (not sure why the mobo has 5 16X PCI-e sockets though, seems a bit daft when you can only run 4 cards in SLI or Crossfire! Maybe it's for a separate PhysX card or something).

Anyhow when the price reached 3 grand I thought, nah, it can wait.

LOL that is some PC and it will probably be out of date the day after you buy it

or at least available for half the price, lol.

Yes, i've seen it, x399 chipset on board and a new socket tr4, that will be a monster pc build.

The fifth is for soundcards or tv cards or other hardware.

In 2006 i've bought the Asus msn32 sli board together with the gtx8800.
That was serious build at the time, had planned to buy a second gtx8800 for the heavy games but that graphicscard did run all the games i had without any problems.

For the question on maxing out with 4 cards, i think it is quite common that the load of 2 cards in sli is not maxed out but somewhere 70/80.
I don't know what the load would be when running 4 cards, but if two cards are enough your money is better spent on extra memory and ssd.

I updated Win10 last night and the slowdown is quite noticeable. iClone Character Creator is the only thing I've tried so far, but the lag is amazing on my laptop. There was no lag whatsoever prior to this update. Might be looking into an AMD machine someday.


EDIT: What's odd is my desktop doesn't even see that there is an update available.

I now have a large pile of boxes which together should constitute a ThreadRipper system once I've put it all together, I'll let you know later in the weekend how it went.

Ooh, that is going to be a monstrous setup.

Just got over the scary bit, filling with coolant! No leaks, just hope I put the CPU and water block in correctly

Next step, hooking up all those bloody silly fiddly little cables for power on/reset/audio etc.

For anyone interested: ThreadRipper 8 core, MSI Gaming Pro Mobo, 32 G RAM Corsair DDR4 3200, 1TB M.2 NMVE, Seagate Barracuda 6TB SATA drive, oh and water cooling system. All in a glass case!

wow Rolls Royce PC (or Ferrari) are you on bread and water for the next 12 months LOL

Cool system,I had water cooling a few pcs ago.its very good at doing the job,i naw have a sealed cooling system that seems to hold its own.i hate that feeling just before you turn on a home built comp for the first time.good luck with yours .

Dave

Grrr, somethings not working and I'm not sure what!

The NVME is not showing up in the BIOS setup and the SATA drive is making an awful racket, tried installing win 10 but it just goes back to the MSI splash screen.

Tried everything I could think of so a trip back to Novatech is in order for tomorrow methinks. I need to go back anyway to get some PWM case fans or some extension leads for the fans that came with the case as they don't reach the sockets on the mobo!

Hi Amenmoses Did you try to install Windows? The NVME should show up in the list of available disks for windows installation its a PCIe device not SATA I had the same issue I just booted from a windows 10 USB drive and installed windows 10 pro it all worked fine, maybe disconnect your sata drive while you install windows.

I also belive it may work by changing AHCI to RAID in the BIOS, it was a while ago when I did it but this is what I remember In the BIOS I went to Advanced, and then to the Windows-tab. I Deactivated Windows 7 support, and ACTIVATED Windows 8/10 WHQL-support.

I went back to the boot-tab and set Boot mode to UEFI (=no legacy support).

install windows. When installed, the NVME will be presented as "Windows boot manager" in the boot-tab.
hope this helps

Yep, tried all that. The BIOS setup page has a cool facility where you can examine all the devices attached, including all M.2 devices. The NVME does not show up at all so I think it's buggered, the 6TB SATA drive does show up but as it is making some really horrible noises I'll get a new one anyway.

Windows USB install gets as far as the 'copying files' stage and then just aborts, probably because it can't find anywhere to actually install itself.

The BIOS is reporting all the RAM, the ThreadRipper itself and all the attached fans so I think everything else is working fine.

how many M2 slots do you have my first mistake was not using the bottom one if you have two the top one only becomes active if the bottom one is populated

3, what do you mean by 'bottom' and 'top'? I tried putting it in all 3 and no joy in any of them.

the one closest to the motherboard is 0 next one up is 1 and so on they are 'piggy back' so 0 has to be populated before 1 would work and 0 & 1 would need to be populated before 2 works, something to do with PCIe lanes or something lol.

on a separate note I could not install windows when I had more than one dimm slot populated I installed with just 8Gb then added the other dimms after I installed windows.

I have an ASUS ROG motherboard not MSI it took me about 4 hours to sort it before I could install windows, I also could not install windows in a USB3 port it would only install from a USB2 port on the back of the motherboard

what chipset is your board and model number, also is it a Samsung pro m2 drive?

I wonder if it supports your m.2 but i guess you have checked up on which memory modules and M.2 storage drives are supported by your motherboard.
That would mean d.o.a and thus getting another one.

My M.2 slots are all separate, not piggy backed..

X399 MSI Gaming Pro Carbon mobo, Samsung NVMe SSD 960 Pro.

I'll try it with just one RAM stick.

If the modules are placed in the right configuration it should not be a problem.

About 80 percent of the problems which people have with their system is due to memory.
Either is is not supported by the mainboard, or not in sync with what is supported by the cpu, or placed in the wrong configuration.
Most of the times it does work, but the system simply becomes unstable and hence, bsods can occur, also it can cause failures to occur during the installation.
If it did reset itself before the copying of files was completed when installing windows, that points to a problem with memory.

This has been my experience when i was running a repairshop for pc systems but that is quite some time ago. (pre vista era)

EDIT: it can of course also be a bad memory module which causes problems.

ahh ok like I said mine is the ASUS ROG they are stacked



it worked for me with the combination of plugging the USB installer in a port on the back of the PC USB 2 not USB 3 port

I don't know what MSI boards are like now, haven't played with one for ages, got fed up with all the annoying issues they have and moved on to ASUS and never went back, but older boards memory slots used to be paired, you couldn't have a single memory stick you had to put two or four in, and you couldn't just put them in any slot, they had to be a paired slot, they used to be coloured so you put the second stick in the matching coloured one.

That’s right ,if I remember right on mine if you had 2 installed it was slot 1 and 3

Dave

All working now, needed a BIOS update, the one installed in the mobo was way out of date!

I'm posting this from the new system btw.

The cooling system I've fitted is a bit over the top, it's working a bit like a refrigerator and cooling the whole room down!

Gonna tidy up all the cables next and refit all the glass.

Great ,hope you get lots of use from it .

Dave

Great.

I'm curious how many frames you will get now with GameGuru on highest setting in the big escape.

Game Guru isn't going anywhere near this beast! Not much point trying it as it not going to benefit from all the cores/threads anyhow.

Maybe when I can get my hands on a couple of Vega RX 64s to shove in there I'll try it out for a laugh or two.

Edited to add that GG doesn't run on it! At least a standalone I had access to doesn't run, haven't installed Steam yet so not sure if the latest version will run.

Damn fast system though, boots up and shuts down instantly, my son has now run off with it to give it a more thorough test.

Streaming, rendering a 2 hour video and working with substance using the cpu instead of the gpu.