What are your Pre/Post 'Spectre' (Bios Update) Benchmark Results

[Robbie_Jardine]

As most of you know from the media, Intel has been working with hardware partners to release Bios Updates to fix CPU vulnerability 'Spectre' in many of their processors covering 10 years.

Gigabyte have released Bios Update for my motherboard, however I decided to run a benchmark test before and after applying the update.

I have noticed a vast difference in performance and although I was expecting this I wanted to see how other have been impacted.

Here are my system specs

Windows 10 Pro 16299.192
Intel Core i7 (Skylake) 4.0GHz
Gigabyte Z270X Gaming 8 - Bios Update F9a
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB)
Asus Strix GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
HyperX Fury 480GB

Pre Update


Post Update

 

[TechFreak1]

Good idea!

Almost a drop in 8% (overall)... interesting to see how others fare overall.

As most of these are synthetic the difference will be noticeable depending on your work load / what you do on the PC.

If it's just gaming then the drop won't be that much yet.

 

[Robbie_Jardine]

I mostly use my PC for gaming and have yet to test for any in game performance differences, however 2D/3D Graphics performance has decreased as well.

It remains to be seen if there will be future bios updates that will remedy or improve performance degradation.

 

[Paul Gorski]

No perceivable difference at all. Nothingburger. ( I use Xbox for gaming )

 

[13paul13]

I've got a Surface Pro 4, Core M model. I've not done any benchmarks, but just from using the device I can't tell any difference in performance as to how it was pre-update.

 

[squeezy99]

I have an AMD FX and since updating to KB4073290 it is running much slower.

 

[TechFreak1]

I mostly use my PC for gaming and have yet to test for any in game performance differences, however 2D/3D Graphics performance has decreased as well.

It remains to be seen if there will be future bios updates that will remedy or improve performance degradation.

I see.

Any applications you used to test 2D/3D graphics performance before and after the patches?

In regards to future bios updates, I too am taking the wait and see approach.

To other forum users, can you please post screenshots of any benchmark run before and after the patches were applied. Also list what other applications were used to gauge performance differences before the patches were applied and after the patches were applied?

Hopefully this way we can build a clear understanding how these patches are affecting performance of devices across the board. As these flaws impact almost all devices with ARM to X86/X64 SOCs/cpus.

 

[dlls]

I have the BIOS updates available but I have not patched any of my PCs and I probably never will. I also blocked KB4056892. I'm not willing to sacrifice performance and get possible random reboots because of the rushed fixes just so I can gain some false sense of security.

The truth is the risk from these exploits is minimal. The only remote attack vector for these is javascript which browsers should be able to mitigate sufficiently. Otherwise, the attacks will have to be performed locally.
By the time some malware makes its way into a PC, whether that PC is vulnerable to Spectre or Meltdown class attacks is pretty much irrelevant anyway.

 

[Dani Lag]

Im running an i5 6600k @ 4.5 ghz and i had never updated the bios till recently. Running 16 gigs 2933mhz hyper x fury and a gtx 1060 gigabyte windforce oc 3gb. I updated the bios on my asrock gaming k4 motherboard as i was having issues on the old bios and i went from 727 score in cinebench to 685 just from the update :/ both times at 4.5ghz. And i went from a 10000 cpu score on firestrike to around 9300. Weird performance hit tbh