Well, title states it quite clearly: just want to know if my system is fully protected (or not…?) against the Spectre & Meltdown bugs. When I built this pc back in January, the main focus was general use & for some gaming here & there. OS is Windows 10 Pro running version 2004 & it’s fully up-to-date including the latest drivers. These are the only things I changed recently: I enabled XMP so the ram can run at its advertised speed & recently the BIOS was updated to the latest version. To be clear: the system is technically NOT overclocked; everything is at stock settings aside from the ram.
The only help I actually need with this is interpreting the results as I’m not the best when it comes to advanced pc-tasks. (It kind of depends.) I’ve included a screenshot of the results.
Hopefully someone with expertise/proper experience can help me out with this. If any of you happen to need more details or have any questions to ask, just ask away & I’ll be sure to answer as best as I know. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!
No Intel proc sold in the last decade or so is safe from these inherent design flaws. If being safe from them is an obsession for you, either buy AMD or wait for Intel to design a new architecture that mitigates the issues. You’d be in for a long wait: although Intel has their best engineers on the job, it takes a few years to get a new design production-ready. The flaws are in the design and therefore baked into the chip. Yes, the OS can (and will), with the microcode Intel provided, build some sort of wall around it, but that wall isn’t impermeable. So it’s still an attack vector for malicious users, even if the risk is provable lower then without the microcode in place.
As said, the chip design AMD uses is not affected by this. Which is not equal to being perfectly safe…
I didn’t read everything but to answer the question in short:
No it’s not.
Intel needs to make changes to the CPU die itsels meaning architecture changes on a physikal basis to mitigate them completely.
Hm. Both of what you said actually makes sense. Just of curiosity, do these bugs seem to be less of a problem with 10th Gen? To me, it sounds like upgrading to a newer Intel CPU/Platform down the road --(maybe 5-10 years-ish)-- would be a great option. Not sure if upgrading to AMD would make much sense as I just game & not much else that’s demanding. But anyway, I will definitely get plenty of use out of my current rig until it’s literally time to upgrade.
Spectre and Meltdown are not about (gaming) performance, but security. As I said, every chip Intel sold for the past decade is affected, that includes 10th gen. I haven’t seen any confirmation if it was solved in gen 11 chips, but if it had, Intel would make a song and a dance about it in their marketing. They haven’t, so it’s safe to assume that the new chips are still vulnerable.
As for switching to AMD, that’s entirely your choice. Yes, Intel “wins” in some highly Intel-favorable synthetic benchmarks, but only just and are you really gonna see that difference compared to a better spec’d but still cheaper AMD setup? Intel still gets a beating from AMD in more “real-life” benchmarks and by some margin in some cases. As a non-gamer, Intel has nothing to entice me over, nor do i see anything in the pipeline that may influence my choice in this for the foreseeable future. But, that’s personal
IMO, sounds like you just choose based on your preferences. But then again, there’s the strong possibility of Intel further improving the security of their CPUs in the future as well as other improvements that they’ll make along the way.
True, but there are some people out there like me who are perfectionists & pay attention to detail. If I can’t get things perfect the way I want, I can still live with that.
Everyone does, really. OT, but for me the price/performance ratio is pretty important. I’d love to have a 64-core Threadripper system, but at US$ 4k+ I cannot justify the purchase as most of my computing only needs the power of a Ryzen 5 1600AF that would only cost me 120-ish US$. As said, being a non-gamer I don’t need the highest possible raw single-thread CPU power one needs for playing today’s AAA games. Gamers do have that preference, so choose based on that criterium.
Fair point, but those sales have already been tanked by the rize of Rizen (see what I did there ) which increased AMD’s market-share on the desktop considerably and their gains on the server market are, well, comparatively epyc. (ok, hat, coat, that was a bad one )
The Easy Method (Windows): Download the InSpectre Tool
To check whether you’re fully protected, download the Gibson Research Corporation’s InSpectre tool and run it. It’s an easy-to-use graphical tool that will show you this information without the hassle of running PowerShell commands and decoding the technical output.
Once you’ve run this tool, you’ll see a few important details:
Vulnerable to Meltdown : If this says “YES!”, you’ll need to install the patch from Windows Update to protect your computer from Meltdown and Spectre attacks.
Vulnerable to Spectre : If this says “YES!”, you’ll need to install the UEFI firmware or BIOS update from your PC’s manufacturer to protect your computer from certain Spectre attacks.
Performance : If this says anything other than “GOOD”, you have an older PC that doesn’t have the hardware that makes the patches perform well. You’ll likely see a noticeable slowdown, according to Microsoft. If you’re using Windows 7 or 8, you can speed things up some by upgrading to Windows 10, but you’ll need new hardware for maximum performance.
You can see a human-readable explanation of exactly what’s going on with your PC by scrolling down. For example, in the screenshots here, we’ve installed the Windows operating system patch but not a UEFI or BIOS firmware update on this PC. It’s protected against Meltdown, but needs the UEFI or BIOS (hardware) update to be fully protected against Spectre.
Which cpu are you running? Also windows version? I am on latest windows and have a 3900x and 3950x both of which say are protected from spectre and meltdown.
The InSpectre tool should do the job in checking for Spectre and Meltdown specifically. As we all know there’s been plenty of others since then. If your question is “is my system safe from speculative execution exploits in general”, then the answer is, maybe? I’m not sure anyone can really answer that, but like others have said the level of “badness” here at least so far isn’t really that high for a home PC.
My vintage C2D, as you can see above, naked and cheerful … yet I don’t really care about it. The chance that someone will hit this machine with such vulnerability is smaller than the chance of winning the lottery.
Simple rule … do not have trash on the PC and avoid bad places on the net. Secure the system well. Don’t forget about updates, scan the machine routinely. Use a VM or a second physical PC / Lap to look in dark places.
More than these vulnerabilities in place of many users, I would be more worried about the lack of a firewall and a well-configured Host Intrusion Prevention System and Sandbox.
Probability of the attack vector … sooner you will get a worm or other parasite through unsecured OS or applications roaming the network than through such problems in cpu.
TBH, this was the 1st thing I did to try & diagnose my system. Not sure if there is anything additional I can do since the system isn’t fully protected against Meltdown. Guys, if you have any suggestions/tips/advice, etc., I’m all ears!
I should mention that while using the tool, I tried “Enabling Meltdown Protection”, but that didn’t seem to make any difference. BTW, this screenshot shows the full details when I use the InSpectre tool:
Do note that all your RGB software are heavily criticised for having a massive amounts of security holes. Don’t be just worried about Spectre and Meltdown also be worried about all the other software you have.
Look, in case YOU’RE the one saying I should be worried, I’m not worried all that much TBH. Yes, I do stay on top of my software updates & no one really has to tell me. I’m just more concerned about the unpatched Meltodown protection if there’s anything additional I can do. Not trying to be rude, but hope you understand me.
To me, it sounds like upgrading to a newer Intel CPU/Platform down the road --(maybe 5-10 years-ish)-- would be a great option. Not sure if upgrading to AMD would make much sense as I just game & not much else that’s demanding. But anyway, I will definitely get plenty of use out of my current rig until it’s literally time to upgrade.
But then again, there’s the strong possibility of Intel further improving the security of their CPUs in the future as well as other improvements that they’ll make along the way.
) which increased AMD’s market-share on the desktop considerably and their gains on the server market are, well, comparatively epyc. (ok, hat, coat, that was a bad one 
