Just How Screwed is Intel without Hyper-Threading?

[Julio Franco]

Today we're exploring the impact disabling Hyper-Threading has on Intel processors. We've done this in the past and it's an interesting test, however there are new incentives to check this out due to the newly discovered side-channel vulnerabilities affecting Intel processors and their impact on Hyper-Threading.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1850-how-screwed-is-intel-no-hyper-threading/

 

[Psywar]

So, the less cores you have, more important hyperthreading is. Just what most people assumed in the first place. In games the impact is minimum because they dont use a lot of cores I presume. In the future developers will make use of more cores I think, so this could impact Intel in the short term.

 

[ypsylon]

What I find very interesting is that disabling HT has minimum impact on power draw, especially on newer, more refined design. Now that's not good. I know disabling HT is not like disabling physical cores. Still, without HT you lost 50% of compute power, but suck nearly as much juice (minimal drop that's in margin of error ~5%) as at full capacity.

 

[BSim500]

I don't see the point of testing this on consumer gaming rigs. If it's serious enough that HT is going to be disabled anywhere it'll be "outward facing" web / database servers which is where 99.9999% of data leaks actually occur (why go to the effort of hacking PC's one at a time when you can swipe 700 million at once). The mere concept of going to the extreme of disabling HT on consumer rigs to "make them more secure" when by default 99% of the same rigs will have W10's default firewall "security" of blacklist-only (allows literally every single background process to talk out without restriction) vs a proper whitelisted one, haven't changed their default router's username / password, etc, seems adorably naive.

 

[Reehahs]

Can we get some results for older CPUs, some of us have yet to upgrade from Sandybridge.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Games prefer more cores. apparently, Hyper Threading doesn't really make a noticeable difference unless you are running a BENCHMARK.

A 30% decrease in processing power in most situations won't even be noticeable because these computers are already way overpowered for most tasks.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Disabled HT last week. Old 6-core. No noticeable impact.

 

[Dimitrios]

You had one JOB INTEL!

This is sad.

 

[m3tavision]

Games prefer more cores. apparently, Hyper Threading doesn't really make a noticeable difference unless you are running a BENCHMARK.

A 30% decrease in processing power in most situations won't even be noticeable because these computers are already way overpowered for most tasks.

People don't buy fast CPU to browse the web.

 

[trparky]

As an 8700K user I have to admit while watching the video that goes with this article I cringed quite a bit. And then at the end with the mention that there could be a 16% reduction in performance with the fixes to come, my jaw dropped. Great, so now my 8700K is going to be soon no faster than the 3570K I left behind. Thanks a lot Intel!!!

 

[Paul Deemer]

Will Intel ever build a Processor that isn't flawed or vulnerable to attack?

 

[trparky]

Will Intel ever build a Processor that isn't flawed or vulnerable to attack?

When they have a new architecture in place, which could be a couple of years until that happens. In the meantime, we get to enjoy new exploits.

 

[Dimitrios]

Will Intel ever build a Processor that isn't flawed or vulnerable to attack?

When they have a new architecture in place, which could be a couple of years until that happens. In the meantime, we get to enjoy new exploits.

INTEL has Jim Keller now, he has a temporary contract just like when he helped AMD with RYZEN. AMD has won this round but INTEL will have something very good since Jim was hired last year. No point in buying INTEL CPU's this generation since AMD is best bang for buck and better upgrade potential down the road.

I find it sad and disgusting with INTEL's business practices and with their size and profits they should be smoking AMD. Karma caught up, I waited a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time for this moment.

 

[ChristopherB]

Articles like this are almost clickbait because of how hard this exploit would be to actually use. People are worried this cat pictures, anime collection, pirate movies, etc will be stolen because of clickbait articles trying to get attention.

You had one JOB INTEL!
This is sad.

Will Intel ever build a Processor that isn't flawed or vulnerable to attack?

You two are either an AMD fanboys or know absolutely nothing about this "exploit" and hwo it works.

This is a theoretical exploit. There is no practical way to use this exploit according to the researchers who discovered it and those who verified it. To use this exploit you need direct physical access to the computer when its running the software you want to obtain information from. In addition to that you have to be monitoring it the microsecond that the data passes through the processor. Also setting something up to obtain the data using this exploit is very difficult according to the researchers.

Basically you have to be using the computer running the program and using the data you want to access to obtain it through the exploit. In other words you would have to be trying to steal the data you already have access to from yourself.

The only people who have to worry about exploits like this are large companies such as Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, etc....

 

[trparky]

New processor architectures take years to be developed. As for being exploited on a typical desktop, the web browser is a way to do so via Javascript.

 

[Dimitrios]

Articles like this are almost clickbait because of how hard this exploit would be to actually use. People are worried this cat pictures, anime collection, pirate movies, etc will be stolen because of clickbait articles trying to get attention.





You two are either an AMD fanboys or know absolutely nothing about this "exploit" and hwo it works.

This is a theoretical exploit. There is no practical way to use this exploit according to the researchers who discovered it and those who verified it. To use this exploit you need direct physical access to the computer when its running the software you want to obtain information from. In addition to that you have to be monitoring it the microsecond that the data passes through the processor. Also setting something up to obtain the data using this exploit is very difficult according to the researchers.

Basically you have to be using the computer running the program and using the data you want to access to obtain it through the exploit. In other words you would have to be trying to steal the data you already have access to from yourself.

The only people who have to worry about exploits like this are large companies such as Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, etc....

You sound like an INTEL share holder or employee. If this isn't a big deal then why is this plastered all over the news for the last year or so and go look at the results with benchmarks. The point is there is no excuse for this to happen and many more exploits will be published as time goes on. What's tomorrow gonna bring?

 

[trparky]

What's tomorrow gonna bring?

That's what I'm afraid of.

 

[Angga B]

I've wrote this before in my comment on spectre and meltdown attack.

I sincerely believe that the drive to beat AMD 64 X2 had lead Intel to choose the path of leveraging insecure cache and branch predictions.

Costly move.

 

[J spot]

What I find very interesting is that disabling HT has minimum impact on power draw, especially on newer, more refined design. Now that's not good. I know disabling HT is not like disabling physical cores. Still, without HT you lost 50% of compute power, but suck nearly as much juice (minimal drop that's in margin of error ~5%) as at full capacity.

I looked at it the complete opposite way. Getting extra power with minimal impact on power draw.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Not a single FTSE 100 company is implementing these fixes on any of their vast networks of office machines. And I can assure everyone here that this is true. The vulnerability is classed as low risk amongst system support techs, I should know, I am one.

So this is all worst case scenario, especially as there have been no confirmed attacks and the resources required to pull off an attack means that you would require the prize to be more money than mopst individuals have in their bank accounts etc.

Im not saying these vulnerabilities arent bad but right now they are theoretical and we only know about them because the manufacturer of the CPU Intel has told us they exist.

My suggestion would be carry on as normal, if you are concerned about security, avoid Android phones and whatsapp. You are thousands of times more likely to be targeted through software like that than on your Intel gaming PC.

 

[kmo911]

Now just make a benchmark for i9-9000 series with gtx rtx amd gpus. x z 3xx-390 motherboards with latest BIOS 1903 20h1 win 10 x64 and benchmark them with 8-128 gb ram. im at asus prime z370-p II 16 gb ram gtx 1080 ti FE 11 gb ez update with latest BIOS version updated. 430.64 and not 430.53 nvidia not the fastest ssd but good speed. optimus hdd can be bought. but ill wait till baby sicness are gone in drivers. also I have gb z390 gaming sli. so ill just try out performance on both z3xx motherboards. maybe ill link uberbenchmark later.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/17181720 ps sometimes it fails b.c the moterboard are stated as a 7700k cpu. just scroll down and try it out. no long benchmarks. nxt up unigine heaven and all other could be benchmarked 3dmark 11 13 firestrike dx 11 12. stalker benchmarks are nice too.now you can try out shadow man in 4k textures (crashes out on d3d) crysis 4k quake 3 4k textures.

yeah see the performance with fraps . but the best is turning on DEBUG mode to see real FPS in 1024x736 and little more up to it crashes out. use single screen to get up to 4k. the 4k textures takes up to 2.3-2.5gb to download. o.c you gotta have a 4k 5k 8k screen for this or just 4x 1080p screen or 2x 2k screens on nvida surround. benchmarking in low 1k is easy. but high end monitors 2k 4k 8k are nicer. for those whom using 3gb gpus and 400-700 gpus can still play games nice only in 720p-1k 2k 3k 4k 5k. no one has bad pces. they are just from a nother time of 1st rooling gpu cpu in that time. but I would not go down to ddr 2 1 again.ddr 3 goes fine and let pc overclock and no o.c just to get a little more performance.

I just hope offline gaming from unbutu linuix would be no problem. just use live dvd cd unbutu. in with dvs cd or iso img on usb disk. and try out mac win boot camp in benchmarks. we se no mac benchmarks insede here either.

 

[BurnsDG]

I wonder about the point of this article though? How many people are running 8700K and 7700K on motherboards unlikely to get patched via BIOS updates? Of course, GETTING users to download and install a BIOS patch is a whole other story, but of folks who DON'T ever patch their BIOS, how many would ever even go into the BIOS to turn off HT? Let's be real here, unless Microsoft puts out a MANDATORY Windows Update that pops up a big red warning on the screen at reboot that tells people their Windows will not launch until the BIOS is updated or HT is disabled, I'd lay odds 99%+ of Intel CPU users will never even know about these flaws (let alone care).

 

[NahNood]

Articles like this are almost clickbait because of how hard this exploit would be to actually use. People are worried this cat pictures, anime collection, pirate movies, etc will be stolen because of clickbait articles trying to get attention.

You had one JOB INTEL!
This is sad.

Will Intel ever build a Processor that isn't flawed or vulnerable to attack?

You two are either an AMD fanboys or know absolutely nothing about this "exploit" and hwo it works.

This is a theoretical exploit. There is no practical way to use this exploit according to the researchers who discovered it and those who verified it. To use this exploit you need direct physical access to the computer when its running the software you want to obtain information from. In addition to that you have to be monitoring it the microsecond that the data passes through the processor. Also setting something up to obtain the data using this exploit is very difficult according to the researchers.

Basically you have to be using the computer running the program and using the data you want to access to obtain it through the exploit. In other words you would have to be trying to steal the data you already have access to from yourself.

The only people who have to worry about exploits like this are large companies such as Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, etc....

Sooo.. You're saying the home Intel user should not update, including bios to avoid the overkill patches??

 

[Xclusiveitalian]

So basically Intel is going to downgrade my $350 CPU to absolute sh*t, than sell me a new one, and do the same thing again?

 

[pinscher]

This all seems way to convenient. killing off old computer performance and subsequently forcing people to upgrade.