Microsoft's incompetence or deliberate performance degradation

[RejZoR]

I have enough of this nonsense and I hope it'll blow up into Microsoft's face because this freaking does it.

I have an AMD A9-9420 laptop (4GB RAM, 256GB SSD, genuine Win10, latest BIOS) bought in January 2018 which is entirely useless just half a year later if it's running Windows 10 1709 with KB4338825 update or anything later. If I update it to latest 1803, it's the same slow turd and I can't even fix it because problematic code is in the base update itself. So, after removing KB4338825, laptop became fast again. With KB4338825 being uninstalled and blocked, I received new updates today, KB4345420 and KB4284819. Which both do the exact same nonsense. Turn quite capable laptop into absolute snail. Uninstalled these two stupid updates and bam, performance is back.

Actual measurable evidence and not just my "feels":

KB4284819 | KB4345429 | Both problematic updates removed

Look at the absolutely insane single thread drop of performance with mentioned updates installed. From score of 184 down to just 100. I lost basically half of performance because of some dumb updates.

I'm now forced to use genuine Windows 10 with Windows Update disabled because it's screwing up performance so badly I can't afford to update it anymore if I even want to use it at expected speed.

I don't know what the hell is going on, but this is absurd. I bought the laptop and I have genuine Win10 and I can't use it fully updated. All other Intel systems don't experience this, not even weak laptop with Atom Z8300. And guess what, my old AMD E-450 laptop became slow in the EXACT same way years ago now that I think of it. Which makes me believe Microsoft is doing this deliberately to AMD systems or they are this god damn incompetent that they are screwing it up so badly by mistake.

 

[newtekie1]

I'm just amazed someone would by a dual-core Bulldozer based computer in 2018...

Also, at least one of those updates addresses the speculative prediction vulnerabilities, performance decreases are to be expected.

 

[R-T-B]

Also, at least one of those updates addresses the speculative prediction vulnerabilities, performance decreases are to be expected.

Bingo.

 

[GoldenX]

Drop Windows 10 and call it a day, only the first version was any good with low end hardware, today is the most expensive bloatware.

 

[R-T-B]

Drop Windows 10 and call it a day, only the first version was any good with low end hardware, today is the most expensive bloatware.

I mean while partially true, he'll find the same patches in Windows 7 land, Spectre isn't avoidable. Use Inspectre to turn off the mitigations or blacklist the appropriate patch.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

OS doesn't matter. The vulnerability is in silicon and there's a performance penalty for fixing it no matter how it is addressed.

 

[GoldenX]

I mean while partially true, he'll find the same patches in Windows 7 land, Spectre isn't avoidable. Use Inspectre to turn off the mitigations or blacklist the appropriate patch.

You can disable updates on Windows 7, and on Linux distros, the patch is not that hard on performance.

 

[Hood]

Well, so much for "I'm so glad AMD isn't affected by Spectre, I'll never buy another Intel CPU!", or such, as I've heard dozens or variations of this statement. So much that I was starting to believe it to be true. I would be pissed off too, if I lost half my performance to an update. I guess we're all on "borrowed speed", gained by trickery in speculative branch prediction, now lost by mitigation of same. But half seems excessive, way beyond normal losses. I suppose AMD needs to look into this, before all their Bulldozer victims get together to march on Santa Clara with torches and pitchforks. This is bad. Intel and AMD owe all of us, they're both guilty of "grabbing the low-hanging fruit" of performance without regard for the security consequences.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Instead of clearing the TLB, they should have just killed VM support. That's the heart of the problem.

 

[OneMoar]

TODAY ON TECHPOWERUP NEWS
middling ageing APU gets lower benchmark after patching spectr
MORE NEWS AT A 11

btw you can turn the fixes off in the registery without turning windows update off'
if your system is correctly configured the patch is disabled-by-default

so once again a clue you do no have

 

[natr0n]

TODAY ON TECHPOWERUP NEWS
middling ageing APU gets lower benchmark after patching spectr
MORE NEWS AT A 11

btw you can turn the fixes off in the registery without turning windows update off
so once again a clue you do no have

Pure Savagery.

 

[OneMoar]

Pure Savagery.

tired of hearing about this from people that can't be effing bothered to read the patch notes or the massive documentation microsoft provides

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...ive-execution-side-channel-vulnerabilities-in

if you disable the variant 1 fixes all the fixes are disabled

 

[eidairaman1]

Drop Windows 10 and call it a day, only the first version was any good with low end hardware, today is the most expensive bloatware.

W10 LTSB or Win 7, he can always look at www.askwoody.com MSDEFCON and find out what updates really bork up the os...

 

[plonk420]

or OP could give some real world before and after performance changes rather than some arbitrary benchmark numbers

also

And guess what, my old AMD E-450 laptop became slow in the EXACT same way years ago now that I think of it.

was slow to begin with... i should know, i had an E-350

 

[GoldenX]

You all know that this performance drop only happens in Windows, right?

 

[lexluthermiester]

the patch is not that hard on performance.

Oh yes it is.

You all know that this performance drop only happens in Windows, right?

Incorrect, the performance drop happens in all OS platforms implementing a fix, whether it's BSD, Linux, MacOS, Unix, or anything else.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I'm just amazed someone would by a dual-core Bulldozer based computer in 2018...
Also, at least one of those updates addresses the speculative prediction vulnerabilities, performance decreases are to be expected.

While true, that dramatically? There's more at play than those patches explain.

 

[RejZoR]

I'm just amazed someone would by a dual-core Bulldozer based computer in 2018...


Also, at least one of those updates addresses the speculative prediction vulnerabilities, performance decreases are to be expected.

Because I've tested it prior buying it and it met my expectations and was cheaper than anything Core i3. And this isn't "Bulldozer". It's vaguely based on it, but it was hand modified (unlike Bulldozers which were computer designed) to dramatically boost single thread performance and IPC. Also came with proper 256GB SSD that isn't DRAM-less garbage. Performance decrease to be expected. Not by bloody 50% for god sake so it turned it from as fast as my desktop Core i7 at casual office tasks down to slower than comuter I've had 2 decades ago. Not even mouse moves smoothly across desktop anymore. That's not normal by any metrics. Stop pretending like it is.

TODAY ON TECHPOWERUP NEWS
middling ageing APU gets lower benchmark after patching spectr
MORE NEWS AT A 11

btw you can turn the fixes off in the registery without turning windows update off'
if your system is correctly configured the patch is disabled-by-default

so once again a clue you do no have

Dude, there is a difference between "slightly lower performance" and "performance so degraded even mouse doesn't move smoothly across the screen anymore". I know you can disable updates, but what's the point when some next will screw everything up next time and then I have to deal with stupid long downgrade porcedures. And my computer is configured properly. I even updated BIOS that was specifically designed to address Spectre stuff and latest that adds support for 1803 update. Anything else, genius?

or OP could give some real world before and after performance changes rather than some arbitrary benchmark numbers

also was slow to begin with... i should know, i had an E-350

E-350 or E-450 are NOTHING like this A9. NOTHING. I've had E-450 (which also got this slow basically overnight by god knows which update from the past). Those two clock to 1.6GHz and have shit IPC. This one clocks to 3.6GHz and was specifically modified to boost single thread performance compared to other Bulldozer based CPU's. Literally anything I throw at it works in a heartbeat. Except when garbage updates are installed...

Real world examples? Boot takes like 5x longer, start menu is opening 2x slower, opening simple JPG image takes 10x longer, Opera browser takes 5x longer to open and it is loading webpages so slowly you almost die waiting, Youtube lags and stutters at 480p. But one can always say "you're just imagining things". Which is why I ran CPU-Z to have hard numbers.

 

[RejZoR]

tired of hearing about this from people that can't be effing bothered to read the patch notes or the massive documentation microsoft provides

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...ive-execution-side-channel-vulnerabilities-in

if you disable the variant 1 fixes all the fixes are disabled

Do you read KB documentation for every single update that gets automatically installed because that's the new awesome Microsoft's updating policy? Dude plz...

As for the "if you disable variant 1 thing", that clearly isn't the case when I did that and it installed two more retarded updates that screw up the performance in exact same way. In fact I don't know why OS even has to install ANYTHING given that InSpectre already says my system is not vulnerable to any Spectre or Meltdown even prior all these updates? How does that make any sense?

 

[lexluthermiester]

He has a point. His information is factual and displays a very real problem. Whining he is not. An obscure choice of laptop is not an invalid or incorrect one. It was likely a choice of opportunity. And only a special-snowflake would think the presentation of information made here is "whining". Please do stop being coincidentally ironic.

While I disagree that it is TPU's fault, there are an increasing number of people being needlessly negative and trolling. The world has changed in the past few years, some ways for the better and in some ways not so much. TPU has had to adapt. The number of people being jerks and special-snowflakes has increased and has forced everyone else to be a bit more defensive than in previous years.

EDIT; the comments originally quoted have been removed, so the context of this response may seem weird. Still, I'm going to leave it up.

 

[bogmali]

Thread sanitized. Let's keep it clean

 

[RejZoR]

He has a point. His information is factual and displays a very real problem. Whining he is not. An obscure choice of laptop is not an invalid or incorrect one. It was likely a choice of opportunity. And only a special-snowflake would think the presentation of information made here is "whining". Please do stop being coincidentally ironic.

While I disagree that it is TPU's fault, there are an increasing number of people being needlessly negative and trolling. The world has changed in the past few years, some ways for the better and in some ways not so much. TPU has had to adapt. The number of people being jerks and special-snowflakes has increased and has forced everyone else to be a bit more defensive than in previous years.

The choice of A9-9420 was well thought out and isn't "obscure" really. For the low demanding tasks it's used for, dual core with insane core clocks was a better choice than any quad core with lower clocks. I've also done extensive research on the architecture of it to know it's more suited for the tasks this laptop is used for. When everything is normal (as it was at the time of purchase, 6 months ago), it runs everything super smoothly. Experience of browsing, image editing, music and movies is no different than on 50x more powerful dekstop. Same for Youtube that plays smoothly at 1080p60. After updates, it's almost impossible to browse because it all lags and stutters and Youtube takes half a minute to even load and then it lags at 480p. At 1080p60 basically just stalls after 2 seconds. Hell, like I've said, you can even feel that something as simple as mouse cursor moving across desktop is all stuttering and laggy and you can instantly tell something is horribly wrong. Anyone saying such dramatic difference that even mouse cursor doesn't work smoothly anymore is "normal" has to have a brain damage.

It is even more ironic knowing AMD isn't affected by given vulnerability in same way yet gets such horrendous performance degradation where Atom Z8300, a much weaker CPU that is in fact affected works just the same as it did 1 year ago even after all the patches and using build 1803 (where A9 needs older 1709 with selective updates removed to even work).

 

[R-T-B]

Instead of clearing the TLB, they should have just killed VM support. That's the heart of the problem.

It's a speculative execution timing attack on caches? I don't know where you get "VM" from that.

 

[Melvis]

Have you tried a complete fresh install of the latest version of 10 (1803)? As yes I have seen slow downs on other computers soon after certain updates and a fresh install seems to help.

 

[lexluthermiester]

The choice of A9-9420 was well thought out and isn't "obscure" really. For the low demanding tasks it's used for, dual core with insane core clocks was a better choice than any quad core with lower clocks. I've also done extensive research on the architecture of it to know it's more suited for the tasks this laptop is used for. When everything is normal (as it was at the time of purchase, 6 months ago), it runs everything super smoothly. Experience of browsing, image editing, music and movies is no different than on 50x more powerful dekstop. Same for Youtube that plays smoothly at 1080p60. After updates, it's almost impossible to browse because it all lags and stutters and Youtube takes half a minute to even load and then it lags at 480p. At 1080p60 basically just stalls after 2 seconds. Hell, like I've said, you can even feel that something as simple as mouse cursor moving across desktop is all stuttering and laggy and you can instantly tell something is horribly wrong. Anyone saying such dramatic difference that even mouse cursor doesn't work smoothly anymore is "normal" has to have a brain damage.

Fair enough. If it meets your needs, than it is a good choice. And I agree, these changes are dramtic enough to warrant serious concern and action.

It is even more ironic knowing AMD isn't affected by given vulnerability in same way yet gets such horrendous performance degradation where Atom Z8300, a much weaker CPU that is in fact affected works just the same as it did 1 year ago even after all the patches and using build 1803 (where A9 needs older 1709 with selective updates removed to even work).

You're not alone. These observations are being made all over the place. I have personally seen examples of this kind of problem. This is one of the reasons I disable automatic updates altogether as they have been traditionally more hassle and headache than they're worth. Instead, I teach my clients and customers good computing and security methodologies. Helping people learn a good computing ethic is far more valuable than any patch or fix will ever be.