At the outset of this massive vulnerability, which affects almost all computers built in recent years, it was reported that users should expect a significant slowdown after installing the patches created to address it. Now Microsoft has done some benchmarking tests and has offered a concrete idea of what to expect.
In a post on Microsoft's security blog, Terry Myerson shared some useful information that all Windows users should read. You may already know that hardware manufacturers and developers had been making combined efforts after being informed of the flaws that emerged.
In terms of patching affected systems, Meltdown and one variant of Spectre will have minimal performance impact. However, the fix for the second variant of Spectre will introduce more significant slowdowns and users will notice a decrease in performance on their systems.
This slowdown becomes even more concerning for users running Windows OS on older Intel CPUs—2015-era Haswell or older CPUs, to be exact.
And that's not all. If you're running older versions of Windows, like Windows 7 and Windows 8, you should expect an even greater impact due to older user kernel transitions.
In another related development, Microsoft has stopped patches for Meltdown and Spectre for AMD-powered machines. This reportedly affects older AMD processors like the Athlon X2 6000+.
According to Microsoft's statements, it is working with AMD to resolve the issue and push the updates again as soon as possible.
