Microsoft discusses impact of Specter and Meltdown patches on PC speed

Microsoft discussed in a blog post to what extent users should expect a reduction in processor performance when installing the patches for the Specter and Meltdown vulnerabilities. The performance drop will be noticeable, especially with older processors.

Microsoft summarizes in the blog post based on self-run benchmarks that users with Intel Skylake processors or newer can expect less than a ten percent performance decrease. With older processors, such as Haswell or earlier generations, the performance drop can be so great that users will notice slowdowns. This is also the case with users running Windows 7 or 8.

For computers running Windows Server, an even greater reduction in performance is expected. Myerson recommends that you balance the risk of running unreliable code and the loss in performance that occurs when securing your servers.

Last week it was revealed that almost all modern processors contain some important vulnerabilities, which could allow abuse of out-of-order execution. The Meltdown leak only applies to Intel processors, but Specter also works with chips from AMD and ARM.

Several parties have already released patches to neutralize the security risks, although these often come at the expense of processor performance and in some cases the computer refused to start. Microsoft promises to release more figures on the exact impact of the patches on performance in a few weeks.