Intel CPU bug fix has little impact on desktop PC performance

Intel promised the average computer user would not notice much of a performance difference from the implementation of the fix that resolves a nasty vulnerability in the company's processors. As we wrote earlier today, this vulnerability is present in all Intel processors since the Pentium generation in the mid-1990s and is especially dangerous on shared computing platforms.

TechSpot installed the emergency fix for Windows 10 and ran a bunch of benchmarks on a system with the Intel Core i7-8700K. You can check the full results over here, the conclusion is that in everyday applications that are used by most PC users and gamers there is no performance impact. The performance problem is primarily an issue for datacenters:

The reduction in 4K read performance for high speed NVMe drives is a concern and while this shouldn’t impact any games, any application that is sensitive to this might show a reduction in performance. Of course the brief list of applications I tested showed no real reduction in performance period.

The issue nonetheless remains and is one that has a far bigger potential in affecting servers. It's a serious concern for data centers both on the side of performance and more importantly, security. That's not our area of expertise or interest, so we'll leave that testing to those better equipped to tackle it.