ASUS Provides BIOS updates addressing MDS vulnerabilities, ZombieLoad, RIDL, and Fallout

[Raevenlord]

ASUS is aware that a new sub-class of speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities in Intel CPUs, called Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS), also known as ZombieLoad, RIDL, and Fallout, may allow information disclosure. Intel states that selected 8th and 9th Generation Intel Core processors, as well as the 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor family, are not vulnerable to MDS. If you are using one of these processors, no further action is necessary.

For other Intel processors, ASUS is working closely with Intel to provide a solution in a forthcoming BIOS update. We recommend owners of affected products update both the BIOS and operating system as soon as these mitigations are available. Please find our first-wave model list below and download the appropriate BIOS update from the ASUS Support website. More details, including affected systems, will be added to this document as they become available.



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[jonup]

Is updating the BIOS going to affect the performance of the non-affected CPUs?

 

[ncrs]

Every Intel CPU will be affected. The "non-affected" in this article are simply ones without Hyper Threading. There will be performance penalties from other vulnerabilities that do not rely on HT as tested by Tom's Hardware.

What is more the BIOS is not the only source of microcode updates. Microsoft is distributing microcode updates via Windows Update for Windows 10 lower than 1803. I'm assuming they will be available for the latest versions at a later date. You can disable the mitigations at your own risk.

Don't let marketing fool you, the performance cost is real and has been benchmarked. It affects server CPUs, laptops, and the cost for older generations make them run as bad as AMD FX in heavy I/O.

 

[Cybrnook2002]

non-affected CPUs?

Don't think that statement exists anymore for any CPU still getting BIOS updates.

 

[JB_Gamer]

I've Geekbenched (CPU-test/4.3.3) both our three Skylake (2xi5-6600K & 1xi7-6700K/HT-disabled but raised clock speed by 400MHz) and our three Amd Ryzen (1xr5-1600X & 2xr5-2600) all with latest available UEFI/BIOS before and after updating (with SpeculationControl 1.14 & latest Windows updates) for all available mitigations, and I've found that all these system has taken a performance hit by 4-6% (Intel more than Amd). I can't tell if this test is the best way to detect the consequences of these mitigations, but it's just the test I have available that performs tests to a CPU in quite many ways.

 

[trparky]

And according to Phoronix (this article)...

The Intel systems all saw about 16% lower performance out-of-the-box now with these default mitigations and obviously even lower if disabling Hyper Threading for maximum security.

I can't help but to think that soon my 8700K is going to be no faster than the old 3570K I left behind. Thanks a lot Intel!!!

 

[raptori]

My MoBo and CPU are not supported, that's good I don't intend to lose any performance or disabling HT.

 

[P4-630]

Just a list of laptops?

Is there any list of Asus motherboards about this?