Incoming guaranteed WoWS framerate drops soon, for all players with Intel CPUs + nVidia GPUs

[benlisquare]

For those who haven't been following the recent Intel security debacle, here is a short, summarised summary:

• Intel screwed up with security on all CPUs it made in the past 20 years, due to a base architecture flaw.
• Security patch was released for affected CPUs, which fixes the security flaw.
• Security patch massively downgrades performance.
• Security patch affects all syscalls.
• nVidia GPUs heavily rely on syscalls because they don't have their own integrated pipeline to do this, while Radeon has it since GCN 1.1 and up.
• Basically all nVidia GPUs will have performance downgrade alongside with Intel CPUs if they're used together on patched systems.
• There will be no performance downgrade only if nVidia GPUs are paired with Ryzen CPUs.
• Performance downgrade is anywhere from 30% to 61%, based on benchmarks on systems with the security vulnerability patch. Yes. Really.
• Intel just now cancelled future gen of CPUs.
• Brian Krzhanich sold a lot of stock and ran away before Intel's shares started falling hard.

Since World of Warships heavily relies on CPU calculations, there is almost a guaranteed framerate drop for anyone using an Intel CPU once you've installed the security vulnerability patch, and even more so for anyone using a Intel CPU + nVidia GPU combo due to the syscall issue, including myself.

If you choose to not install the security vulnerability patch, you are putting yourself at risk, as the vulnerability allows level 0 access through the CPU. This means that hackers can directly write to your BIOS.

[SlamUez]

Oh man... 

Looks like i need to buy a Ryzen rig.. And keep my 970GTX.

Or buy an overpriced radeon because of all the crypto miners. 

[LawrenceXVIII]

Thankfully i only uses i3 and AMD ( ASUS ) Radeon 7770HD Direct CU Top.

But sure as heck i don't want to spend money to get and superb overpriced Ryzen or Latest Gimmicks.

[tc1259]

Before we go all pitchfork on this - 

Please go Here and here and here

According to recent reports, Intel and ARM processors suffer a serious hardware-level vulnerability that the vendors cannot patch via a microcode update. Addressing the vulnerability requires a significant retooling of operating systems, in particular Windows, Linux, and macOS, which reportedly causes up to a 30% reduction in performance in some workloads.

 

However, that number is likely overblown for the majority of applications. The overall impact of the performance regression and the specific programs impacted are poorly defined. As with many pre-release security patches, the details surrounding the bug are under NDA for now, but we expect an official update from Intel soon. Both Microsoft and Linux already have patches in the pipeline. AMD's exposure to the bug remains undefined, with some reports indicating the company's processors are immune and others stating that some models are impacted.

What We Know About The Vulnerability

The vulnerability reportedly allows programs to access protected areas of the kernel memory, but the exact nature of the bug is yet unclear. The potential exploits, and what they could do, are also undefined. We do know the fix requires separating the user and kernel memory pages with kernel page-table isolation (KPTI). Some ingrained hardware features on Intel processors, such as PCID (Process-Context Identifier), can lessen the overhead of separating the two spaces, but these features aren't present on older Intel processors.

The Performance Impact

We also know that Microsoft has already deployed patches in the fast ring Windows Insider builds. Those patches rolled out in November. Notably, there haven't been any reports of massive performance degradation from participants of the Insider Ring. Linux patches are already available. For now, the patches are confined to the operating system. It is possible that application patches could also help lessen the impact.

A note of caution: The bug will have an impact on some programs, but the chance of a widespread 30% reduction in performance is slim. Phoronix conducted testing on the patched Linux 4.15-rc6 kernel with an Intel Core i7-6800K and an i7-8700K. It tested applications that are confined to the user space, which are typically indicative of what you would see on a desktop system, and found that these applications "should see minimal change (if any) in performance." That means you will likely see little to no performance impact on your next desktop session, be it gaming or otherwise.

Phoronix did record significant performance regressions with the new kernel during select workloads, particularly synthetic I/O benchmarks. The site conducted these tests with SSDs that tend to offer varying performance based on the amount of past user activity, and the article doesn't indicate if the storage devices were correctly preconditioned. Phoronix noted the new kernel has other changes beyond the bug patch that could also impact performance, so for now, it is hard to ascertain the direct impact of the patch on these workloads.

The performance impact is more pronounced in PostgreSQL, which is an open source object-relational database system. PostgreSQL has issued a warning about performance regression that includes benchmarks showing a 17-23% reduction in performance with the new patch. Redis also appears to suffer a performance loss, but to a lesser extent.

So Much FUD

The vulnerability appears to be most dangerous to data center workloads and virtualization. However, it is irrational to assume that the overwhelming majority of data centers will see a 30% reduction in performance. Losing even 15% of the computational horsepower from a data center would be a major blow, and that compute would have to be replaced almost immediately. The patch has been in development for several months, so if Intel and the major data center operators were expecting massive performance reductions, there would have been an incredible spike in data center equipment purchases.

Also, we would have likely already seen signs of a pending financial disaster for Intel if there was a serious threat of hardware replacements to a wide swath of the data center. Intel's customers would likely be able to pursue litigation for widespread losses that are directly the fault of Intel. It's also reasonable to assume that the company would be required to replace faulty processors. For instance, Intel disclosed during its Q4 2016 earnings call that it had encountered a higher-than-expected failure rate for some of its processors, so it established a financial reserve to deal with the costs of replacements. We reported on Intel's statements, and later the fund was connected to failures in Intel's Atom C2000 processors. In no recent financial commentary has Intel disclosed the establishment of any new funds, so it appears the company doesn't foresee significant hardware replacements any time soon.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich also recently sold $11 million in stock, which some have proclaimed is a sign that he's unloading his shares before a pending disaster. However, Krzanich sold the stock under a 10b-51 plan, which is a pre-planned sale of stocks intended to prevent insider trading. The nature of Krzanich's transactions makes it unlikely that the trades are a precursor of a major monetary loss for the company.

Currently, there are no major shifts in Intel's stock that would indicate a mass sell-off by investors. There are conflicting reports about the impact to AMD processors, and AMD's shares are currently up 5%. However, such an increase is a fairly common occurrence for the sometimes-volatile AMD stock, so the bump may be incidental; in any case, it's not out of the ordinary. Update, 1/3/18, 11:00am PT: AMD's shares are now up 9% and Intel is down 6%.

For now, we await more detail on the nature of the bug and its impact. We expect an update to emerge in a future Patch Tuesday update, but Microsoft has not listed an official release date.

The bug is locked behind a wall of NDAs at this point, which is frustrating. However, the silence is necessary to prevent a wave of exploits. We expect, and have seen already, the normal level of hyperventilation that comes with such news, but it's best to wait for more information. We have followed up with Intel for more information and will update as necessary.

[ArchKongou]

58 minutes ago, benlisquare said:

Spoiler

 

For those who haven't been following the recent Intel security debacle, here is a short, summarised summary:

• Intel screwed up with security on all CPUs it made in the past 20 years, due to a base architecture flaw.
• Security patch was released for affected CPUs, which fixes the security flaw.
• Security patch massively downgrades performance.
• Security patch affects all syscalls.
• nVidia GPUs heavily rely on syscalls because they don't have their own integrated pipeline to do this, while Radeon has it since GCN 1.1 and up.
• Basically all nVidia GPUs will have performance downgrade alongside with Intel CPUs if they're used together on patched systems.
• There will be no performance downgrade only if nVidia GPUs are paired with Ryzen CPUs.
• Performance downgrade is anywhere from 30% to 61%, based on benchmarks on systems with the security vulnerability patch. Yes. Really.
• Intel just now cancelled future gen of CPUs.
• Brian Krzhanich sold a lot of stock and ran away before Intel's shares started falling hard.

Since World of Warships heavily relies on CPU calculations, there is almost a guaranteed framerate drop for anyone using an Intel CPU once you've installed the security vulnerability patch, and even more so for anyone using a Intel CPU + nVidia GPU combo due to the syscall issue, including myself.

If you choose to not install the security vulnerability patch, you are putting yourself at risk, as the vulnerability allows level 0 access through the CPU. This means that hackers can directly write to your BIOS.

 

 

In the end, at least the hackers computers will be slowed as well.

Its happy ending to everyone.

[th3vikings]

You still have to patch it no matter what. If framerate drop so be it.

[Lowyat]

yeah but he knew about it since june.

here

[legionary2099]

1 hour ago, benlisquare said:

For those who haven't been following the recent Intel security debacle, here is a short, summarised summary:

• Intel screwed up with security on all CPUs it made in the past 20 years, due to a base architecture flaw.
• Security patch was released for affected CPUs, which fixes the security flaw.
• Security patch massively downgrades performance.
• Security patch affects all syscalls.
• nVidia GPUs heavily rely on syscalls because they don't have their own integrated pipeline to do this, while Radeon has it since GCN 1.1 and up.
• Basically all nVidia GPUs will have performance downgrade alongside with Intel CPUs if they're used together on patched systems.
• There will be no performance downgrade only if nVidia GPUs are paired with Ryzen CPUs.
• Performance downgrade is anywhere from 30% to 61%, based on benchmarks on systems with the security vulnerability patch. Yes. Really.
• Intel just now cancelled future gen of CPUs.
• Brian Krzhanich sold a lot of stock and ran away before Intel's shares started falling hard.

Since World of Warships heavily relies on CPU calculations, there is almost a guaranteed framerate drop for anyone using an Intel CPU once you've installed the security vulnerability patch, and even more so for anyone using a Intel CPU + nVidia GPU combo due to the syscall issue, including myself.

If you choose to not install the security vulnerability patch, you are putting yourself at risk, as the vulnerability allows level 0 access through the CPU. This means that hackers can directly write to your BIOS.

You dont have to install the patch , jus muh freeze the damn computer using a software , thus avoiding the performance drop.

Another way is to ghost your window as backup in case something go wrong.

Third is to use a seperate weaker PC for work. Then done

[toxicsalt]

I decided to try and see if I got these massive frame drops on my very old Windows 7 PC.  Microsoft released the patch for Meltdown earlier today for 10, 8.1, 8 and 7.

This PC has an 8 year old i7-930 coupled with an NVIDIA GTX970. making it by today's standards pretty 

Guess what, before the patch my average frames with high graphics over 5 games was 65 fps, after the patch over 5 games was 64 fps. 

CPU usage stayed between 15 and 20% with temps for both CPU and GPU never hitting 60 degrees.

 

Really seeing those massive frame drops on my nearly decade old PC.

And supposedly Meltdown affects older models much worse than Skylake, Kabylake and Coffeelake.

[Skarhabek]

   

Well.... this is not good.... 

thanks for sharing the news bro.

[keskparane]

So Intel have been been selling chips for almost half a year with a known security venerability?

[ArchKongou]

54 minutes ago, legionary2099 said:

You dont have to install the patch , jus muh freeze the damn computer using a software , thus avoiding the performance drop.

Another way is to ghost your window as backup in case something go wrong.

Third is to use a seperate weaker PC for work. Then done

Or simply plug out from the internet.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On serious note :

No matter how much the security u put on ur personal data / ur device; as long the Internet exist, ur data & ur personal device is already leak out since u do it on everyday routine. Bank transaction, e-mail, phone call or even the program or utilities that install in ur device can be a source of the breach.

Even some were proclaim they already have way to prevent it, as long the flaw exist, it will never become ending battle. Kinda weird when we see the big tech company keep developing & release the new tech every year and yet been blow up by unexpected flaw.

 

All we can do for now is hope for the best comes from the developers (Microsoft,  Intel, AMD & ARM); either u like them or not.

p/s: It's kinda funny when actually the big tech giant company already knew the flaw back in several years and yet they ......................... well "DID"do something about it, but not so much.

[30cmtruedamage]

Intel seriously makes their customers look like a laughing stock

[HMS_Swiftsure_08]

46 minutes ago, keskparane said:

So Intel have been been selling chips for almost half a year with a known security venerability?

Intel probably know this issue for a long time, and they believed the possibility of this being exploited so low that making a redesign, remanufacture and recall of their products not economically feasible, chip manifacturing is a business after all.

Over 20 years ago, Pentium’s float-point reference table was found bugged, causing it to sometimes output wrong calculating results. However Intel believed it to be a bug so rare that they sold the bugged chips all the same. Eventually the bug was discovered, many customers criticized Intel’s actions, but it turned out the bug was indeed almost nonexistent for regular consumers, it’s not every day that you go use the calculator for something like 4195835/3145727.

I still have faith in Intel, they deliever good products, and acted less like a scum when they have the upper hand. (AMD raised the price of their flagship chips to hell when they gained the upper hand early 2000)

[keskparane]

30 minutes ago, HMS_Swiftsure_08 said:

Intel probably know this issue for a long time, and they believed the possibility of this being exploited so low that making a redesign, remanufacture and recall of their products not economically feasible, chip manifacturing is a business after all.

Over 20 years ago, Pentium’s float-point reference table was found bugged, causing it to sometimes output wrong calculating results. However Intel believed it to be a bug so rare that they sold the bugged chips all the same. Eventually the bug was discovered, many customers criticized Intel’s actions, but it turned out the bug was indeed almost nonexistent for regular consumers, it’s not every day that you go use the calculator for something like 4195835/3145727.

I still have faith in Intel, they deliever good products, and acted less like a scum when they have the upper hand. (AMD raised the price of their flagship chips to hell when they gained the upper hand early 2000)

Yeah I'm sure there is a whole lot of overrated hype about this. But as someone who just got a new cpu for xmas I feel a little peeved. I think it would have been more responsible to release new models after the patch. But the maybe coffee lake has already been patched? I haven't read that anywhere yet though.

[HMS_Swiftsure_08]

2 minutes ago, keskparane said:

Yeah I'm sure there is a whole lot of overrated hype about this. But as someone who just got a new cpu for xmas I feel a little peeved. I think it would have been more responsible to release new models after the patch. But the maybe coffee lake has already been patched? I haven't read that anywhere yet though.

My guess is… No.

The flaw seem to need some major redesign to fix, coffee lake, a "kaby lake refresh", is not very likely to be where something as major as this fix would be found…

[Thyaliad]

Well  me then.

[keskparane]

5 minutes ago, HMS_Swiftsure_08 said:

My guess is… No.

The flaw seem to need some major redesign to fix, coffee lake, a "kaby lake refresh", is not very likely to be where something as major as this fix would be found…

I wasn't meaning hardware fix. I meant a software fix since all the drivers wouldn't have been release before the problem was discovered, no? So effectively it would be easy to add the fix within the software required for adding support for the new generation.

[ArchKongou]

25 minutes ago, keskparane said:

Yeah I'm sure there is a whole lot of overrated hype about this. But as someone who just got a new cpu for xmas I feel a little peeved. I think it would have been more responsible to release new models after the patch. But the maybe coffee lake has already been patched? I haven't read that anywhere yet though.

I know how it feel mate. 

As for myself who has 2 new machine powered by Intel, well........... screw me.

But yeah I have 2 Ryzen rig on my deck.

5 minutes ago, keskparane said:

I wasn't meaning hardware fix. I meant a software fix since all the drivers wouldn't have been release before the problem was discovered, no? So effectively it would be easy to add the fix within the software required for adding support for the new generation.

Wasn't a guarantee. Still have the flaw on it. 

Just wait for major update from Intel & Microsoft on it. 

[devil667]

WoW, intel actually bothered to work on some sort of fix to the security issue. However, due to the nature of the problem I was certain it would also require some work from the MOBO manufacturers in the form of some bios updates. That makes me wonder about the long term validity of this fix. In order to get all MOBO manufacturers to fix their bios for all the MOBOs that fielded Intel chips for the last decade would take some serious effort from Intel's part; and honestly I don't think intel ever cared about anything except their latest couple of gens. 

I myself am using an AMD Phenom2 x4 955BE [from2009 xD] paired with an Nvdia gtx 1060 and 4gb of ddr3 :P . Even though my GPU should handle this game at max with ease I end up getting frame drops due to the game being poorly optimized and thus burdening the CPU instead. -_-' . Thus I am running it on mostly medium with a few highs[for the ones i know are mostly GPU bound] in settings. 

[Bitrot]

There is a lot if misinformation around regarding this topic. There are a few benchmark sites up with Linux and windows patches in place, it seems to effect games the least with 1 to 5 franes dropping depending on resolution.

Most games these days are GPU bound. 

[toxicsalt]

1 hour ago, Bitrot said:

There is a lot if misinformation around regarding this topic. There are a few benchmark sites up with Linux and windows patches in place, it seems to effect games the least with 1 to 5 franes dropping depending on resolution.

Most games these days are GPU bound. 

Exactly, this is why people should test this stuff out before screaming and causing panic among the herd. unless someone is running a High Performance computing, Data Analysis or Cloud Based Servers, it won't cause any real performance degradation. In fact the highest performance drop for games reported was with SW BF 2 but even then it was only 5%.

 

If people are so scared that their frame rate is going to collapse, make a restore point, install the patch, test WoWS. If there are drops then return to the restore point and put yourself at rick of getting attacked.

But from everything I tested on two separate Intel chipped machines there are no problems.

[Bitrot]

Here are a few articles worth reading;  Some benchmarks showing post and pre patch results across synthetic tests, SSD's and games

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/windows-vulnerability-cpu-meltdown-patch-benchmarked,3.html

Conclusion, for gamers and desktop users using windows 10 and recent CPUs, 0-2% drop in performance, pretty irrelevant really.

Might want to search for other benchmarks if running older hardware, as result may vary.

This is quite an accessible article on how modern CPU's and OS' work around virtual memory, the page table, page table cache ala translation lookaside buffer (TLB) and ring mode access

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/whats-behind-the-intel-design-flaw-forcing-numerous-patches/

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/meltdown-and-spectre-every-modern-processor-has-unfixable-security-flaws/

 

Worth noting that while meltdown only currently effects Intel, it's a vulnerability still in it's early days and still being actively explored and developed and looks like it might find some stuff in ARM eventually.

[Bitrot]

26 minutes ago, darkflame88 said:

Exactly, this is why people should test this stuff out before screaming and causing panic among the herd. unless someone is running a High Performance computing, Data Analysis or Cloud Based Servers, it won't cause any real performance degradation. In fact the highest performance drop reported was with SW BF 2 but even then it was only 5%.

 

If people are so scared that their frame rate is going to collapse, make a restore point, install the patch, test WoWS. If there are drops then return to the restore point and put yourself at rick of getting attacked.

But from everything I tested on two separate Intel chipped machines there are no problems.

Yeah the sensational clickbait is really annoying, makes it hard to search for good articles and research.

Not to mention programs can make changes to alleviate the effect as well by profiling how they use syscalls, if they really need to, batching them etc  This will come into play as well..

Database and application server performance, thats what i'be been looking for.

[Bitrot]

Another benchmark pre and post patch

https://www.techspot.com/article/1554-meltdown-flaw-cpu-performance-windows/