The specialized medium TechSpot, checks if Intel processors really lose performance with the security patch for Windows 10, which fixes the problem of Meltdown and Specter.

This year is being especially hard for the big manufacturers of processors and that barely four days of the year have passed. Intel, AMD and ARM, according to Google and Microsoft, have two vulnerabilities called Meltdown and Specter, which allow in systems with multiple virtual machines, that the one who accesses one of these, can without permission, have access to the memory of the other . The correction goes through a special security patch for Windows, Linux and macOS, which has already been released, but it remains to be seen if it affects as much as is being discussed.

TechSpot It has been arranged to check if this security patch, in this case for Windows 10, negatively affects performance and in terms of quantity. For the test they used the Intel Core i7 8700K processor and a Samsung 950 Pro NVM SSD for storage. Actually, the performance under this Intel processor is practically not affected, the difference in performance is around 1%, up or down.

Cinebench R15 before the patch gave in multi thread a score of 1423 and in single thread it gives 195 points, while after the patch, in multi thread it drops to 1391 points, but in single it goes up to 197 points. Blender returns a pre-patch result of 25.8 seconds and after the patch it gives 25.1 seconds (the shorter the better). Corona 1.3 gives a pre-patch result of 142 seconds and post-patch gives a result of 141 seconds. In Excel 2016 there are no differences, since in the two cases in the Monte Carlo simulation, it gives 2.64 seconds. We go to the 7-zip in 32MB dictionary, where for the decompression before the patch it gives 39506 points and after the patch it gives 39075, while in the compression, it gives 42333 points before the patch and after the patch it gives 42461 points.

Regarding gaming, the benchmarks have been made with a GTX 1080 Ti and several benchmarks have been passed. The first is Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, which in 1080p resolution and high quality, has given an average of 135FPS before the patch, while after the patch it has given 137FPS. Assassin's Creed: Origins has 1080p resolution and Ultra High Quality has given an average of 94FPS in both cases. Battlefield 1 in 1080p resolution and Ultra Quality, before the average patch it has given 177FPS, while after the patch it has given 181FPS.

Apparently, this patch in Windows 10 under the Intel processor does not affect performance, rather on the contrary, it seems that in all cases it equals or improves performance, except for some very specific benchmarks. It does not matter relatively, because a 1-2% loss of performance or on the contrary, an improvement in performance does not have the least real impact in the case of gaming and in the case of specialized software, it may matter, but there is no significant jump .