Intel cpu users to wail, gnash teeth, scream at the heavens. AMD users to snigger.

[Almagnus1]

It may be old news to you, but to the general population or as you call them 'chicken littles' this is major news on par with the "fake news" you so fondly refer to.

Eh, not really, but it is amusing watching people that think they have a clue wring their hands at the "evil corporation" when the reality is it's all a bunch of virtue signaling grandstanding that

Any security flaw is a major concern and remains such until mitigated or fixed, especially one that exposes Kernal memory to unauthorized processes even with the limiting "physical access" which I do not remember reading in any article about this chip design failure.

Let me put it to you this way:

There's a security flaw in any datacenter where an actor can use social engineering to walk into the datacenter without proper authorization, take a machine for "maintenance" and walk out with it, with a lot of high business impact data on it. In said scenario, physical access is required, but the security flaw in that scenario is a breach in the security protocols... yet no one is really losing sleep over this because corporations treat high business impact data as if it's super top secret and are extremely strict (to the point of firing people that breach protocol) about who has access to it.

Same is true with physical access to any computer. If I can access your computer, I can dump all of your storage to an external device and also compromise your operating system (so given enough time) I will be able to access all your data and use your computer for nefarious ends..

Or I can get access to a computer with the affected Intel CPUs and mod the motherboard to exploit the vulnerability.

In all of these scenarios, one simple question renders this issue moot:

Why did that actor have access to the computer in the first place?

Any security flaw that forces OS manufacturers (Microsoft, Linux, Apple) to re-write parts of an OS is a major problem.

So you missed the part about Microsoft already having a fix ready to be deployed...

Which basically means you're just grandstanding about something you clearly don't understand.

Any flaw in a CPU is of concern to an end user it is a defective product they paid for and there is no remediation available until the flaw is identified.

If you only knew how many bugs are in the software products and hardware products you are using now... you'd prolly die of shock.

This speak nothing of the cost to Users to replace all those flawed chips to avoid the performance hit, the lost revenue to Intel for all the end users that will not buy Intel chips because of the flaw, nor the cost to Intel to re-design their CPU lines.

I'm not planning on replacing my Intel i7 anytime soon...

And this isn't the first time that someone has found a bug in an Intel CPU, and it definitely won't be the last time...

[gervaise1]

As mentioned this is an architecture issue discovered by a group of (EU funded) researchers to seek out this stuff. Published papers are out there. Briefly: they found a potential way that modern architecture might be exploited. Developed a proof of concept that applied to Intel, ARM, Qualcomm and AMD. They subsequently took things a step further for an Intel cpu which didn't work out of the box on ARM or AMD. In their summary however they made a point of saying that this did not mean that AMD and ARM were immune - simply that they hadn't done the work!

As the bods who found tis said: this is due to the "speculative processing" being introduced by all manufacturers / developers in the pursuit of ever greater performance.

Put another way: not only is the issue cross-hardware it is also cross-operating system: Windows, Linux, masOS.

Having found the potential issue they advised Intel, AMD, ARM, Qualcomm, Google, Microsoft etc. before they published anything. After several months of work a Windows "insider" patch was deployed in November which has been tested. A Linux patch has also been tested. Results of these tests show a "zero to insignificant" real world performance impact although some synthetic measures show a hit. And to add a bit of context: they were using Haswell processors when they found this!

OP its OK for you to gnash your teeth now ...... gnash, gnash, gnash

[Hurin]

As mentioned this is an architecture issue discovered by a group of (EU funded) researchers to seek out this stuff. Published papers are out there. Briefly: they found a potential way that modern architecture might be exploited. Developed a proof of concept that applied to Intel, ARM, Qualcomm and AMD. They subsequently took things a step further for an Intel cpu which didn't work out of the box on ARM or AMD. In their summary however they made a point of saying that this did not mean that AMD and ARM were immune - simply that they hadn't done the work!

As the bods who found tis said: this is due to the "speculative processing" being introduced by all manufacturers / developers in the pursuit of ever greater performance.

Put another way: not only is the issue cross-hardware it is also cross-operating system: Windows, Linux, masOS.

Having found the potential issue they advised Intel, AMD, ARM, Qualcomm, Google, Microsoft etc. before they published anything. After several months of work a Windows "insider" patch was deployed in November which has been tested. A Linux patch has also been tested. Results of these tests show a "zero to insignificant" real world performance impact although some synthetic measures show a hit. And to add a bit of context: they were using Haswell processors when they found this!

OP its OK for you to gnash your teeth now ...... gnash, gnash, gnash

Fair and accurate.

My favorite part is:

• When what the researchers say about the exploits conflict with what Intel says, the OP calls Intel liars and fools.
• When what the researchers say about the exploits conflict with what AMD says, the OP accepts what AMD says uncritically and at face value.

Nope, no cheerleading/partisanship/bias there!

From the Project Zero write-up itself:

Other microarchitectures
Our research was relatively Haswell-centric so far. It would be interesting to see details e.g. on how the branch prediction of other modern processors works and how well it can be attacked.

Case in point (Intel are always liars while AMD is always honest): The OP states that AMD is fully immune to "meltdown" because AMD says so. . . and yet the original researcher on meltdown reports:



Similarly the OP accepts AMD's PR about "Spectre" affecting AMD CPUs as being a "near zero risk" because the leak is so "slow." And yet Project Zero reports that the leak can almost certainly be made worse with more research and effort: "leaking more bits at a time should be doable." And, I might add, it's always amusing when someone dismisses the leaking of protected kernel memory as trivial because other bugs leak it worse. . .

Such a partisan mindset refuses to take into account the simple fact that the researchers focused upon and demoed their PoC on Intel CPUs. They state repeatedly that AMD is affected. Perhaps by any and all of the "variants." They just didn't focus on AMD. Accepting AMD's rosy assurances and PR as truth from above in light of this while dismissing everything Intel says as foolishness and lying. . . that's partisan hackery better left to the political realm. It's always a shame when such things invade tech discussions. Yet it began in the very title of this thread.

--H

[Hurin]

CERT has revised its write-up and no longer calls for the replacement of all affected CPUs as quoted by the OP prior.

Also, in that same write-up, there's yet more indication (in addition to that posted immediately above) that AMD CPUs being immune to "meltdown" may in fact be wishful thinking.

After all, there's a fine line between saying something is immune to a vulnerability altogether and immune to a vulnerability as demonstrated. Leave it to the tech partisans and the usually terrible tech press to interpret "not vulnerable to the PoC code as demonstrated" as "immune." Subtlety is not their forte.

Though something tells me that if Intel were in this position (asserting immunity in uncertain circumstances), some would be more readily pointing out that distinction.

--H

[Hurin]

IS&C Stormcenter states that Apple phones and iPads are unaffected.

source.

I stand corrected on this (iOS devices). They are affected according to multiple sources. Here is Apple's advisory.

--H

[OghranNasty]

CERT doesnt think the patch is enough to protect you, but still hasnt separated out the 3 different bugs; instead lumping them all in together. https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/584653

Before you start believing you understand this stuff better than CERT: you are confusing vulnerability with exploit. There is one vulnerability: ASLR is compromised by a combination of speculative execution and caching, and there are (at the moment) three exploits. Those are not three separate bugs: these are three separate attack vectors on the same vulnerability.

[Lord.Funk]

From what I understand the full fix will also rely on firmware updates from Intel "Intel® Management Engine Critical Firmware Update (Intel-SA-00086)". The thing is You need to contact Your Motherboard manufacturer as well to get the proper BIOS update.

There is already a tool up on Intels site, so You can check if Your CPU is affected. Make sure You get the proper version of the tool for Your Computer depending on Your O/S etc. Yes it affects not only Windows as it's a hardware problem, it also affects Linux and Mac O/S etc.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us.../software.html

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27150

Here is a video explaining pretty well how to do that test without alot of the drama surrounding the topic atm. Also links in the videos description.

Your Intel CPU Could Become Up to 30% Slower



If You watch the whole video he also posts some preliminary benchmarks of how the fix will affect various CPU's etc. Note that they are preliminary as it's a Hotfix or band-aid sofware fix that is rolled out fast to try and do a workaround fix for the hardware problem. With time they might be able to tweak the fix/band-aid to give less performance hit. We will have to wait and see. Also not all CPU's will be affected as much. Also depending on what tasks You do etc. Gaming doesn't seem too badly affected at all. However very little hard info so far, so again we will have to wait and see. This thing has been there for 10 years so no need to panic. At the same time be aware as now all hackers know about it as well of course and might start to exploit it.

[Yarbro]

I cannot open doors by thinking "Open" at them, this is certainly because I am not trying hard enough.

The researchers are just covering their arses.

There are bound to be vulnerabilities in AMD chips, just not this one. The reason being INTEL and AMD took radically different philosophies in how to design their cpus; and probably this "flaw" is the advantage that this INTEL design uses to stomp all over AMD chips in single core processing results.

This flaw is also possibly the reason the INTEL single core advantage doesnt scale up to beat AMD at high multicore performance. More cores mean more speculative processing, which means more chances of it getting the guess wrong.

[OghranNasty]

From what I understand the full fix will also rely on firmware updates from Intel "Intel® Management Engine Critical Firmware Update (Intel-SA-00086)". The thing is You need to contact Your Motherboard manufacturer as well to get the proper BIOS update.

There is already a tool up on Intels site, so You can check if Your CPU is affected. Make sure You get the proper version of the tool for Your Computer depending on Your O/S etc. Yes it affects not only Windows as it's a hardware problem, it also affects Linux and Mac O/S etc.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us.../software.html

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27150

That is about CVE-2017-5705 - 11, which is an entirely different thing: and issue with the Intel Management Engine and related platform driver. Not as bad by a league or two, as exploits require physical access to the machine, and flashing the BIOS.

[Polymachos]

From what I understand the full fix will also rely on firmware updates from Intel "Intel® Management Engine Critical Firmware Update (Intel-SA-00086)". The thing is You need to contact Your Motherboard manufacturer as well to get the proper BIOS update.

That may work for machines with a proper mainboard that has been officially bought from a dedicated manufacturer. Unfortunately, my ready made PC contains a customized version of dunnowhat, and I doubt that Medion - the PC builder and a daughter of a chinese company - will provide a BIOS update for a model that is at least 18 months old.


Greetings, Polymachos

[Hurin]

I cannot open doors by thinking "Open" at them, this is certainly because I am not trying hard enough.

The researchers are just covering their arses.

Hah! So convenient. In your partisan, blinkered world, it must be the researchers "covering their arses" and not the chip manufacturer with billions of dollars on the line who just watched their competitor's stock price plummet! Priceless. You don't even hear yourself now, do you?

There are bound to be vulnerabilities in AMD chips, just not this one.

I assume, by "this one" you mean "meltdown" since AMD (along with almost everyone else) is inarguably vulnerable to "spectre". . .

The reason being INTEL and AMD took radically different philosophies in how to design their cpus;

Because AMD says so! And they would never say anything untrue or put out PR that is technically true but misleading! Only Intel (and security researchers and everyone but AMD) does that!

You need to read the part unerlined in red again. . .

Every indication from the original researchers into "meltdown" is that AMD also performs the requisite "out of order" execution (note: not "speculative execution" though it does that too) as well as other behaviors upon which meltdown depends. They just didn't spend the necessary time to develop proof-of-concept code and demonstrate a full compromise of it.

So, well, to use your analogy above, the original researchers are stating that the "door" on AMD's house might indeed be opened by thinking about how to open it in relatively the same way enough. Because that door does the exact same things as the one on Intel's house. They just didn't put as much focus (or "thought") on picking that lock.

Again, you seem to conflate/confuse the nature of the "meltdown" vulnerability (which depends upon out-of-order execution whereas spectre depends upon speculative execution) with invulnerability to the proof-of-concept code as developed and written for an Intel chip.

and probably this "flaw" is the advantage that this INTEL design uses to stomp all over AMD chips in single core processing results.

This flaw is also possibly the reason the INTEL single core advantage doesnt scale up to beat AMD at high multicore performance. More cores mean more speculative processing, which means more chances of it getting the guess wrong.

And. . . again. . . the part underlined in red in the image above should be reviewed. And it should be pointed out that you seem to be confusing out-of-order execution with speculative execution.

But, this above almost seems like you're saying Intel's performance advantage was due to cheating by using out-of-order execution. Which is bizzare given that AMD demonstrably performs out-of-order execution as well.

--H

[Gandolf_TheOld]

Eh, not really, but it is amusing watching people that think they have a clue wring their hands at the "evil corporation" when the reality is it's all a bunch of virtue signaling grandstanding that



Let me put it to you this way:

There's a security flaw in any datacenter where an actor can use social engineering to walk into the datacenter without proper authorization, take a machine for "maintenance" and walk out with it, with a lot of high business impact data on it. In said scenario, physical access is required, but the security flaw in that scenario is a breach in the security protocols... yet no one is really losing sleep over this because corporations treat high business impact data as if it's super top secret and are extremely strict (to the point of firing people that breach protocol) about who has access to it.

Same is true with physical access to any computer. If I can access your computer, I can dump all of your storage to an external device and also compromise your operating system (so given enough time) I will be able to access all your data and use your computer for nefarious ends..

Or I can get access to a computer with the affected Intel CPUs and mod the motherboard to exploit the vulnerability.

In all of these scenarios, one simple question renders this issue moot:

Why did that actor have access to the computer in the first place?



So you missed the part about Microsoft already having a fix ready to be deployed...

Which basically means you're just grandstanding about something you clearly don't understand.



If you only knew how many bugs are in the software products and hardware products you are using now... you'd prolly die of shock.



I'm not planning on replacing my Intel i7 anytime soon...

And this isn't the first time that someone has found a bug in an Intel CPU, and it definitely won't be the last time...

I see you are not up to date on the issue. It is the AMD CPUs that physical access is needed to exploit due to a different kernel paging access method, Intel can be accessed remotely.

Knew about MSs fix and its release date, 9 Jan. Did not miss it, did mention it - remeber the comment about OS manufacturers having to patch their OSs?

Since I have been in IT; programmed, designed, built and secured both government and private systems and networks, I think I would not be shocked by the number of bugs in computer systems. However, I do admit I am not as up to date on that rodeo since I retired in 1994.

Any way nice attempt to discredit a post taking you to task for minimizing others concern over an issue they may not be as well versed in as others, that nonetheless has an impact on them..

[Yarbro]

Actually, I did read an article that went into fairly great detail on the differences between how Intel and AMD implement the feature; however it was several nights back that I stumbled across it, and I shut down my PC before thinking to save it.

I am also sure that Google isnt short of money or resources, and that after finding the weakness in the INTEL chips their research team have had over 6 months to find and exploit the same weakness in AMD chips - and havent yet managed it.

Ditto SPECTRE; I AM SURE I could run a 4 minute mile if I put my mind to it; doesnt mean it is true or will ever happen; so their claim that they are sure they can make it happen faster; again SIX MONTHS after discovery - and with no headway, would suggest their claim is no more likely than mine.

They are covering their arses, so if someone DOES come up with a way - 6 months or 6 years or 6 DECADES from now, they can say "well, we told you so".

Someone mentioned this was done with EU funding, so you also have to bring that into the equation; a definitive answer means no more funding on the matter; maybe and perhaps will get more funding to find the answers; I seen to remember a story about teaching a horse to sing.

[Hurin]

I see you are not up to date on the issue. It is the AMD CPUs that physical access is needed to exploit due to a different kernel paging access method, Intel can be accessed remotely.

On the whole, you seem to be better informed than the person with which you're arguing who seems to have missed a lot of details bout this new set of vulnerabilities and/or is confusing it with older ones. But I'm puzzled by this focus on physical access and I wonder if there's still some confusion going on between meltdown + Spectre and the prior Intel Management Engine vulnerabilities on both sides.

Meltdown, if memory (from sporadic researching amidst patching and other work yesterday) serves, does not require physical access. Though, it does require a malicious service or application to be run on the target operating system. This can largely/effectively be mitigated via OS patch (as was done yesterday for MS and Redhat, prior on Mac). Meltdown depends upon "out-of-order execution" on the CPU which all vendors perform (though the researchers only spent time on demonstrating an attack on Intel).

Spectre can be exploited by as little as a bit of javascript on a compromised website. A compromised browser can then access restricted memory that could possibly result in the leak of sensitive information (passwords, etc.). Spectre depends upon "speculative execution" on the CPU which (again) all major vendors perform.

In neither case, unless I'm mistaken, does physical access play a substantial/necessary role. Though, perhaps we're hung up on the old saying: "If someone with knowledge and ill intent has physical access to a computer, it can be pwned". . which is essentially true. A good example is the ability of anyone with physical access to a Mac to be able to boot into recovery mode and change the administrative user's password. Similar things are possible on a Windows box though not with built-in tools as on a Mac. Drive encryption and TPM would seem to alleviate such concerns. But now we're far afield of Meltdown and Spectre.

Best Regards,

H

[Hurin]

Actually, I did read an article that went into fairly great detail on the differences between how Intel and AMD implement the feature; however it was several nights back that I stumbled across it, and I shut down my PC before thinking to save it.

What a coincidence! Such a shame you lost it! You could have educated us all on why you're 100% correct. And probably also helped AMD and even Google Team Zero out a lot. Indeed, you could have saved Team Zero a lot of time by just telling them how immune AMD is. . .

I am also sure that Google isnt short of money or resources, and that after finding the weakness in the INTEL chips their research team have had over 6 months to find and exploit the same weakness in AMD chips - and havent yet managed it.

Ditto SPECTRE; I AM SURE I could run a 4 minute mile if I put my mind to it; doesnt mean it is true or will ever happen; so their claim that they are sure they can make it happen faster; again SIX MONTHS after discovery - and with no headway, would suggest their claim is no more likely than mine.

Is there no limit to the assumptions and logical contortions you will make in order to backup your preconceived notions and stroke your obvious biases made evident as soon as you wrote the thread title?

You harp on six months and pretend to know just how much of Google's resources it puts into the Zero Day Project and then pretend that some rational, ironclad conclusion can be derived from that. Conveniently forgetting, of course, that this went undiscovered on Intel's part for almost twenty years.

Look at the rhetorical straws you're now being reduced to grasping. It's getting embarrassing for you now. Per usual.

They are covering their arses, so if someone DOES come up with a way - 6 months or 6 years or 6 DECADES from now, they can say "well, we told you so".

Someone mentioned this was done with EU funding, so you also have to bring that into the equation; a definitive answer means no more funding on the matter; maybe and perhaps will get more funding to find the answers; I seen to remember a story about teaching a horse to sing.

Everything with you comes down to a conspiracy and malfeasance. Except when AMD (or anyone else you're fond of) says something. Then it's gospel.

Something you should keep in mind. . . AMD claims that its implementation of out-of-order and speculative execution makes exploitation impossible or unlikely. Now. . . what would Intel have said eight months ago prior to being contacted about the issue? You really, really, need to think on that.

That you so blithely accept the word of one while pooping all over the other is the entire point. You routinely expose yourself as a compromised and highly biased purveyor of information. Heck, you essentially did that when you wrote the title of the thread. And everything since only further demonstrates it.

--H

[maartena]

Well, I updated my computer yesterday with the Microsoft "patch Tuesday" update that was released early by Microsoft in light of this bug, AND I updated my mainboard BIOS (Gigabyte) who issued a new BIOS firmware in December 2017 which includes a fix for this particular issue.

Although I haven't ran any extensive tests as of yet, it seems that my game performance was not affected at all, it runs as smooth and fast as before the patch and firmware update.

[Yarbro]

this went undiscovered on Intel's part for almost twenty years.

Except of course, the conspiracy theorists are already suggesting this might be a NSA mandated backdoor that has been discovered and must now be closed; Since back at that time AMD were still mostly making clones of Intel chips, it would then be conceivable that the NSA never bothered ordering them to include a backdoor, as they assumed AMD would just continue to copy the Intel design - complete with the backdoor.


And why do you keep making me out to be an Intel hater/AMD lover?? Yes I buy mostly AMD gear, but mainly because it was more fun to tinker with it; Intel used to lock down their chips too much to have any fun with them. I have certainly mentioned in-forum that the FX series is a POS and I was going back to a Phenom set up - which I did - and it runs just as well as the hellishly overclocked FX, and at a much lower clock speed and cpu temp.

If you want hate, I will tell you about my hatred of Gigabyte, who I used to be a loyal fan of, until I had a string of brand new boards all fail with exactly the same fault all within a fortnight*, which got a "shrug" from their UK office, replaced with new boards which ALSO failed almost immediately (one was dead out of the box); and my hatred of Seagate, who make extremely unreliable HDD's and fail to honour warranties on them. * ethernet port died.

As for Intel, I dont usually talk about them, because I dont use them and hence dont have much of an opinion; historically, the Intel gear I have had (20 years ago) was well made and reliable; however Intel have now had 3 extremely embarrassing hardware design failures exposed in consecutive years, The Puma range, the Atom ####-up, the i7 overheating problem, and now this.


You, on the other hand are extremely defensive and negative about everything I say; to the extent of being a nal about it; and on the occasions I have been shown to be correct; instead of admitting it, you have slunk off and sulked, then ignored me and butted in to the threads concerning the issues you have spent hours insisting didnt exist.

[Almagnus1]

I see you are not up to date on the issue. It is the AMD CPUs that physical access is needed to exploit due to a different kernel paging access method, Intel can be accessed remotely.

Amusing... why don't you try to actually engage instead of trying to sling mud like you always do?

Besides, the research didn't thoroughly test AMD and Arm because (shocker) they only focused on Intel.

Since I have been in IT; programmed, designed, built and secured both government and private systems and networks, I think I would not be shocked by the number of bugs in computer systems. However, I do admit I am not as up to date on that rodeo since I retired in 1994.

Which basically means that anything past a Pentium 2 and Windows 98 (both editions) are newer than your work experience. I highly doubt you worked with Windows NT at all - which is actually the ancestor of the modern strain of Windows. (NT's code base became 2k which had useful things like a USB stack added to it and released as XP, and was refactored/rewritten into Vista which was optimized into 7 that had Sinofsky screw up the UI at 8 while also optimizing the OS which Microsoft tried to hack back into something useful at 8.1 while continuing to optimize and later had large chunks rewritten into 10 with further optimizations).

In other words, everything you were working with is ancient history, you have no work experience dealing with cloud computing, and all the code you were working with was designed with one processing core in mind. I highly doubt you were working with anything that is an ancestor of anything we're using today.

Go back to retirement and let the people working in industry handle this grandpa.

Any way nice attempt to discredit a post taking you to task for minimizing others concern over an issue they may not be as well versed in as others, that nonetheless has an impact on them..

Or maybe I actually know what I'm talking about because I'm still in the industry you left two decades ago - which (by Moore's law) is closer to around 10 periods of doubling - or 10 generations of technological change.

I'm just calling BS on what you're saying because your work experience is so old that it's basically irrelevant to the topic at hand.

[Hurin]

Except of course, the conspiracy theorists are already suggesting this might be a NSA mandated backdoor that has been discovered and must now be closed; Since back at that time AMD were still mostly making clones of Intel chips, it would then be conceivable that the NSA never bothered ordering them to include a backdoor, as they assumed AMD would just continue to copy the Intel design - complete with the backdoor.

You can't possibly be serious. How does it not bother you to always be reduced to saying and clinging to such things in lieu of just conceding a point?

Have you ever noticed how you tend to post things that provide a reason why you might just conceivably not be wrong but by the end are seldom in a position where you can post a positive reason for why you're correct? An unfalsifiable conspiracy theory like the one you're forced to post here is a perfect example of just that phenomenon.

And why do you keep making me out to be an Intel hater/AMD lover??

You mean beyond the title of the thread you wrote, your eagerness to post it, your admitted fondness/preference for their hardware, your constant emphasizing of worst case scenarios for Intel, best case scenarios for AMD, and the dismissal or wishing away of any information that counter the pro-AMD narrative? And when all else fails, invent another one of your conspiracy theories as immediately above?

You, on the other hand are extremely defensive and negative about everything I say

On the contrary. I correct objectively bad/wrong information that you post that could actually mislead people and even cause harm to their computers. And then you engage in shenanigans for page after page instead of admitting your error.

and on the occasions I have been shown to be correct; instead of admitting it, you have slunk off and sulked

This has never, ever happened. Not once. And I'm not above being corrected and apologizing when I'm wrong. Please post just one link (those reading along --both of you-- should know he has a habit of posting links that in fact, when actually visited, don't substantiate what he claims is substantiated. . . but it might give the casual reader the impression that it does). In fact, it has been you that has been proven wrong (sometimes dangerously so, sometimes hilariously so), time after time. And after engaging in shenanigans for page after page, either change the topic entirely, introduce another unfalsifiable conspiracy theory, or begin talking about your health. Nearly all of which are on display immediately above. At which point, confident the casual observer can see what is going on and that your misinformation will no longer harm anyone, I usually let it drop. That you somehow might see this as "slinking off" says volumes. I simply grow tired of the nonsense.

then ignored me and butted in to the threads concerning the issues you have spent hours insisting didnt exist.

Is this in reference to your XBox Controller causing LotRO crashes claims that I tried to actually help investigate? Did you perhaps miss my heartfelt apology to you for letting our prior history color my judgement and behavior there?

But, in contrast to that one instance, there's all these. . . alas only a partial list. . . please note the handy asterisks providing links! You're welcome!

• You insisted that Core 2 Duo CPUs run LotRO better than modern ones.(*) And ever since pretend you have some secret defense against the benchmarks provided to refute such nonsense that you can never actually be bothered to provide or even describe.
• You told everyone --even in the face of correction and evidence-- that their desktop and/or documents are stored in c:\windows rather than in their user profile(*).
• You told us that LotRO stores character data and progression locally(*).
• Amidst outright dishonest/shenanigans on your part, insisted that cleaning out c:\windows is necessary because "Windows constantly scans" it.
• Amidst all that, inventing conspiracy theories about nvidia or amd (or both) deleting/replacing directx files (etc.) when they aren't traversing the file system and randomly trashing other programs(*).
• The multiple times you've told people that the read-only checkbox on a folder being "marked" is a sign of a problem when it is not and is, in fact, the default state(*).
• When you aren't busy urging Windows users to reinstall Directx 10, 11, or 12 when that is in fact, not possible. It took pages to convince you that this was the case, then you went silent as usual.

I'll be blunt. Somebody capable of such nonsense and shenanigans probably shouldn't be providing advice or technical help to others. Or, at the very least, they should be humble enough to accept correction when provided. Instead, we get page after page of nonsense, bad logic, irrelevant stories, and random news about your health. But never, ever the acceptance that you might have been leading people astray or giving them bad information. Not once.

And sadly. . . that's not even a complete list and can't possibly encompass all the "I suspect. . ." followed by nonsensical, unsubstantiated, distracting nonsense you constantly inject into what should be straight-forward troubleshooting threads.

Honestly, correcting all the misinformation you routinely leave behind and wrenching troubleshooting threads back to some semblance of progress and sanity whenever you take part could be full-time job. It's beginning to feel that way.

I await your vague "your list is wrong" and you "slinking off" as you tend to do at this point.

--H

[Yarbro]

Having gone off to check your "Sorry" link; no I didnt see it, as it was buried in a pile of ranting.

As for the rest, I stand by my theory that AMD/Nvidia driver updates may be screwing with dx files; having experienced exactly that issue with a fresh AMD update only last week (the final straw and why I have gone back to a release from nearly 6 months ago).

I also stand by my theory that the older cpu architecture works better with the way LOTRO has been programmed, my daughters Xeon quad cpu is basically a souped up Core2, yet running 2GHz slower than my hexacore FX6300 was, and using only DDR2 RAM, it managed to keep up within a couple of fps of my system in all the fps not-spots, and reach the same maximum fps I was reaching when my system was using the gfx card she currently has fitted (R7265), and at the same detail levels.

And as I mentioned up thread, I have ditched that FX chip and gone back to a Phenom II for much smoother game play at lower GHz and heat levels (3.8GHz v 5.1GHz, 42C v 55C).

As for the dx package, I will take it under advisement; look at it myself when I have the time, and if you are correct, I will admit so, in a mature manner, and not buried in the middle of a rant.

[Hurin]

Having gone off to check your "Sorry" link; no I didnt see it, as it was buried in a pile of ranting.

As for the rest, I stand by my theory that AMD/Nvidia driver updates may be screwing with dx files; having experienced exactly that issue with a fresh AMD update only last week (the final straw and why I have gone back to a release from nearly 6 months ago).

I also stand by my theory that the older cpu architecture works better with the way LOTRO has been programmed, my daughters Xeon quad cpu is basically a souped up Core2, yet running 2GHz slower than my hexacore FX6300 was, and using only DDR2 RAM, it managed to keep up within a couple of fps of my system in all the fps not-spots, and reach the same maximum fps I was reaching when my system was using the gfx card she currently has fitted (R7265), and at the same detail levels.

And as I mentioned up thread, I have ditched that FX chip and gone back to a Phenom II for much smoother game play at lower GHz and heat levels (3.8GHz v 5.1GHz, 42C v 55C).

As for the dx package, I will take it under advisement; look at it myself when I have the time, and if you are correct, I will admit so, in a mature manner, and not buried in the middle of a rant.

Translation: Firm data, carefully cultivated benchmarks, transparently presented research, primary sources provided, and carefully worded arguments will not matter at all in the moment. But weeks or months later I'll promise to (re)consider so as to appear reasonable when confronted with a tally of how many ridiculous things I've done and said over the months. But, in the end, I will still not admit I was wrong about anything, ever. Not even once.

Nicely done.

[Palenen]

Great read here, possibly already posted. Gives a bit of insight. I am guessing it's possible to own an INTEL CPU that is not affected with all their variants. I run an SandyBridge-E quad core i7(extreme now called X-Series) socket 2011 without some of the INTEL technologies such as vPro, AMT and Intel TXT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

[Gandolf_TheOld]

For those truly interested in the latest CPU troubles and their discovery, here is an Authoritative source about Meltdown and Spectre. https://meltdownattack.com/

[Laerien]

I stand corrected on this (iOS devices). They are affected according to multiple sources. Here is Apple's advisory.

--H

Oh thank you! And thanks for the bench too
----------

This thread may contribute to clear some doubts regarding this issue, keep it classy.

[Madmanthief]

Hurin, did you honestly expect anything less from Yarbro ?

It's a constant stream of BS with him/her when it comes to anything even remotely resembling rational thought.