Spectre and Meltdown effects on older generations (Ivy Bridge and Haswell)
Spectre and Meltdown effects on older generations (Ivy Bridge and Haswell)
I understand the concerns about fixes for Spectre and Meltdown affecting performance. Updating your BIOS with these patches and using InSpectre to disable Windows updates might help, but it doesn’t guarantee improved speed. The BIOS update could still limit performance even if Windows has patches installed. Your situation with Dell and HP Ivy Bridge/Haswell systems, along with the inability to roll back BIOS versions due to Intel ME integration, means you’re stuck with whatever the latest BIOS offers.
It didn’t fully recover the performance since the windows updates fixed things automatically. My 3770K got a microcode patch, which cut its speed by about 100MHz and required higher voltage for stable clocks. Performance dropped roughly 10–20 GFlops. I got it just before the updates were released, so while I was checking out my new setup, they were pushing these changes. It was really tough.