The Computer Thread

Nah, no point, and its not top end.

It is literally every single chip, its really not something to concern yourself with because.

A) It affects every chip, meaning there is no difference about who you go with.
B) It is of little consequence to the consumer, and is mostly something that affects businesses and universities.

Raineh, I study this stuff for a living, it is not saying we are doomed, it is saying that there is no permanent solution, because it is fundamental to computers.

AKA: No mater what solution is used, this will come back and we will have to crush it agian....

and agian....

and agian.....

Which is nothing new for cyber-security, it is just a new vector to watch out for.

Jhon Oliver actually nailed what Cybersecurity is like.... perfectly.

I am actually on the opposite end here, and think people are worrying way too much over it, because it is not something that will concern them all that much.... its something that engineers have to concern themselfs with, and the normal person can just continue using there product like they were before.

Enterprises have more of a concern here.

edited 4th Jan '18 4:17:38 PM by Imca

Eh, it's not like the way caches are structured doesn't change anyway.

Its a problem of the speculativity, not the cache.

Changing the Cache structure just means you need to break into it in a different way, but the flaw is still there.

The only permanent solution is to remove speculativity which is a non-option due to how important it is to make modern computers run.

Basically what we have encountered is "You can make the car stop if you destroy the wheels" of computing..... the only permanent solution would be to not have tires..... Sure you can make better tires, but there still going to be destroy-able if you try hard enough, and now people have realized that.

edited 4th Jan '18 4:25:05 PM by Imca

But if you change the cache structure then maybe you can avoid taking such large performance hits on the software side.

Ah well, we'll see.

As for CPU advice, how much are you looking to spend?

That is a much fairer point yes, and I would agree that new CPU's that have been designed with this flaw in mind wont take nearly as much of a hit from any safety features that get added.

They will still have the issue, but any patches wont be so..... kit-bashed.

200 to 250 give or take. US Dollars that is.

edited 4th Jan '18 4:28:15 PM by Steven

How soon do you need it by?

Edit: Whats your motherboard while we are at it?

edited 4th Jan '18 4:34:11 PM by Imca

Hm. And do you plan to reuse DDR 3 RAM?

Also a point. Each motherboard only has a specific socket, most upgrades need a new motherboard... And OS licenses are tied to motherboard.

edited 4th Jan '18 4:35:47 PM by RainehDaze

I might have to get a new motherboard anyway since the one I have uses the AM 3+ socket. as for RAM, i don't know off hand what type it is.

I think running dxdiag should give you the type. I mean if it's Windows, which is probably the case.

edited 4th Jan '18 4:43:44 PM by RainehDaze

It only shows how much I have, not what type it is.

EDIT: Speccy to the rescue! It is DDR 3. And for how soon I need it? Not right now, but I am gonna look into my options after I get my tax returns.

edited 4th Jan '18 5:03:15 PM by Steven

It might be best to ask agian then, those are normally in April right?

That will be 6 months after the last time new CPU's came out, and should be just in time for the next batch.

Even keeping an old GPU, I think I spent about £300 on other internal components, with a cheaper CPU and getting the OS for no cost.

Everything I have is up to date. It's just the CPU that's my bottleneck currently and I'm exploring options for down the road.

You sure its bottle-necking you? If its for gaming or whatever, its the GPU mostly that does it.

Most modern games will run on a 1.2ghz tri core at high, if you overdo the GPU......

Actualy, this is another good question, what re you using it for?

There are things like Total War that bottleneck because of CPU, to be fair, and scripting-heavy games.

Gaming mostly. Final Fantasy XIV is my main game and i know that is very CPU heavy. I don't need the very top end of the line, but I do aim for something at least pretty good or close to it.

!

If you want something until then, try setting the FPS cap option in FFXIV, I am running it on ultra on a laptop quite easy, but it has the fps unlocked by default and that will burn through resources like mad.

edited 4th Jan '18 8:07:03 PM by Imca

I already have an FPS cap on it

So how hard is that patch going to hurt gaming? My CPU is already at the minimum requirements for a lot of games I have...

It's not supposed to affect gaming at all.

Yep. They already started benchmarking games with the patch and the performance drop is in the 5% range.

5% is still really huge when you are right at the barest minimum requirements cpu wise. 5% is in the probably won’t play well at all any more range.

edited 5th Jan '18 6:16:33 AM by Memers

All I can say is to try it. You need this patch; antivirus programs can't detect exploits of these flaws heuristically, so you're at the mercy of whoever wants to steal data from your computer.

Ugh I really don't want to get it if its going to ruin basically the only things I use it for anymore... All games on Steam and elsewhere better be looking to revise their system requirements upward with a refund option.

There better be some serious class action lawsuits going on right now on this and getting replacements.

edited 5th Jan '18 12:36:53 PM by Memers