Recently I think Windows 10 had some sort of patch for my PC , currently running at version 1803. I believe it patched up the Spectre vulnerability issue. However, there are numerous issues after that. Very likely because my PC is quite old already. Massive performance hit.


Let me give you some example:


1. Large file transfer, say 50GB single file from another PC from the same network , lets say a NAS to my main PC will make the whole system laggy and not responsive. Yes , even in Safe Mode with networking. I reinstalled my Intel I-218V LAN adaptor , not helping neither. I increase the interrupt moderation rate on the LAN adaptor, not helpful.

2. I'm running on Unifi ISP with 500mbps DL and 100mbps UL. When I run speedtest.net with latest 64bit Chrome browser with adblock plus + Tampermonkey anti adblocker add-in, my system will become unresponsive and lag. Getting only like 460Mbps DL and surprisingly still getting 100+mbps UL . I went to Safe Mode, I did the same test , at last getting 500mbps DL 100mbps UL.


There is a common symptom when I did both test . In task manager, 1 of the CPU Core Utilization goes up to 100% , that is where the computer becomes unresponsive.


What I did after that, disable HTTP scanning protocol on my anti virus ( I'm running on the latest ESET NOD32 AV), turn off windows defender firewall . Not much better still.


Next thing I did, I disabled my Spectre vulnerability patch and reboot my machine. Walla , all my unresponsive issues gone altogether and even browsing internet is more responsive than before. Redo speedtest.net, i'm getting reduced latency and better DL and UL speed.



My current rig spec:

Win 10 version 1803

Core i5 4690k running at 4.5ghz core , 4.3ghz uncore

16GB DDR 3 2400Mhz on dual channel

256GB Samsung PM961 NVME SSD ( an enterprise variant of the Samsung 960 Evo)



My NAS (home build):

Win 2008 R2

Core 2 Quad 9650 running 3.6Ghz

8GB DDR2 800Mhz RAM

4TB of HDD storage ( 1TB X 4 running on RAID 0)


Both of them on gigabit network. Router TP-Link Archer C9 .

Intel already confirm there is performance reduction when patching Spectre vulnerability issue. They finally confess after kena tembak kaw-kaw.

True. Intel told us that there will be performance hit. However, I read other articles, there is only like the most 20% hit.

I never expected the performance hit like this.
A very responsive computer suddenly become like a junk running Windows 10 with 1GB of RAM . It is that kind of performance hit I'm talking about.

Yes, so what you could do it is to disable the update that caused this problem. This is an unfortunate byproduct of the update.

Slow lah k!nex,

I posted about it long time ago here
https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/4547450

Edit:
On the other hand, the latest microcode seem to have performance improvement.....of course, microsoft hasn't provide latest microcode yet.
If you are installing https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/41...-windows-server this old microcode....well.....slow down?

If you install the latest microcode....which in my case, 0x20 instead of old 0x1F for ivy bridge...you will get less impact.....
In your haswell case, instead of so called microsoft latest 0x24, latest is 0x25..

Example of slightly less performance impact with latest microcode:



Older spectre microcode from my ancient thread:



Latest spectre microcode.

By the way, this 'performance' covers SSBD too as I enabled the mitigation. It is disabled by default by microsoft


This post has been edited by JohnLai: Sep 1 2018, 07:44 PM

1GB of ram is the problem, you need more. Even 4GB of ram is too little for browsing as browsers have a security update that makes them eat a lot of ram.

Oh ya, he said he uses chrome....chrome latest security feature, Site Isolation gonna use a lot of RAM. 1Gb is not enough.


https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-secu.../site-isolation

What he means is the problem turns his 16GB computer into "a junk running Windows 10 with 1GB of RAM."

This post has been edited by soonwai: Sep 1 2018, 08:11 PM

Either way, I think there gonna be a lot of people complain about not able to get 500Mbps or 800Mbps via LAN due to their low cpu clock and not getting LATEST microcode update........

After all, the first spectre patch.....my ivy bridge cpu was clocked at 4.2Ghz and I only get around 672Mbps average from my networked drive with one core maxed. After manually patching my BIOS with latest micodecode update....voila....half cpu utilization on one core and 1000Mbps!

Microsoft is sure slow in deploying latest microcode update....

Its the damn Microsoft fault. I didn't even notice the patch was installed automatically via Windows Update.

I don't even know when did it install until 1 fine day I need to backup my NAS files which require me to transfer massive amount of movie files to my main rig to be stored in external USB HDD because my NAS doesn't have USB 3.0 support.

Anyways, my usual performance for file transfer is something like this , very close to the 1Gbit limit :




Anyways, I had issues with random blue screen after activating Spectre patch though seldom happen. Usually IRQL_not_less_or_equal error message . I'm very confident it's not because of my overclocks. Probably only the Intel 4th gen behaves like that.

Ok, I read your old post. That was version 1709 . Mine is version 1803 . Still behave so shitty.

This post has been edited by k!nex: Sep 1 2018, 10:28 PM

Doesn't matter which version. It still happen on 1803 until I update to latest microcode.
Can you check your microcode version using RWEverything?
http://rweverything.com/downloads/RwPortableX64V1.7.zip
Run RW.exe and go to 'Access' --> 'CPU MSR'
Patch ID is your microcode version. edit: the installed microcode probably 0x24
Latest haswell microcode version is 0x25

Please install SpeculationControl tools too.

Open powershell with administrator access.

Install-Module SpeculationControl
set-executionpolicy -scope currentuser Bypass
Get-SpeculationControlSettings

Copy paste or take a screenshot of the results

After that, restrict the scope again
set-executionpolicy -scope currentuser Restricted

edit3: of course you can get close to 1Gbps, your CPU is OC-ed to 4.5Ghz and your Haswell IPC is higher than my IvyBridge (OC 4.2Ghz). About that bluescreen....do you have a lot of WHEA error at event viewer? Seem to me your OC ain't stable.

This post has been edited by JohnLai: Sep 1 2018, 10:47 PM

i see, seems like haswell has turned into junk i guess . However hope is not over, thanks to throttlestop, with haswell being very tweakable.

Thanks anyways. I will wait for Microsoft to update, afraid my OS will brick if I do manually. You're right though. current microcode is 024 .