Gaming Performance Only Faintly Touched By MDS / Zombie Load Mitigations

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Gaming Performance Only Faintly Touched By MDS / Zombie Load Mitigations

Yesterday I published some initial MDS/Zombieload mitigation impact benchmarks while coming out still later today is much more data looking at the CPU/system performance impact... But is the gaming performance impaired by this latest set of CPU side-channel vulnerabilities?..

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...-Gaming-Impact

[ms178]

Thanks for clearing this up, Michael. Though I prefer performance improvements to regressions any day.

[xfcemint]

I think the article should have made it more clear that this is with HT on.
To really mitigate ZombieLoad, you need HT off.

Although I speculate that for games, in most cases there will be little difference. But, for the sake of clarity and to provide non-confusing data, you always have to do a run with HT off, and to clearly note it in the article.

Well, in fact, it is also going to depend on number of CPU cores. If a game needs more than 2 cores, and the CPU cannot provide them, there might be some performance hits.

[DoMiNeLa10]

I think the article should have made it more clear that this is with HT on.
To really mitigate ZombieLoad, you need HT off.

Although I speculate that for games, in most cases there will be little difference. But, for the sake of clarity and to provide non-confusing data, you always have to do a run with HT off, and to clearly note it in the article.

Well, in fact, it is also going to depend on number of CPU cores. If a game needs more than 2 cores, and the CPU cannot provide them, there might be some performance hits.

From what I've seen, HT tends to improve performance in games that are designed to run on many threads, which pretty much boils down to modern stuff.

[xfcemint]

I think even the modern stuff needs a few threads at most. In most cases, 2 cores are sufficient.

[geearf]

I think the article should have made it more clear that this is with HT on.
To really mitigate ZombieLoad, you need HT off.

It seems pretty clear to me:

This comparison is just looking at the MDS mitigations with HT still enabled and the other Spectre/Meltdown/Foreshadow mitigations at their defaults.

unless it was added later.

[ThoreauHD]

At least intel owners have that respite from performance degredation. Intel's gonna have a hard next couple of years if the rumor mill tea leaves are accurate. AMD ain't playing around with Zen 3. No more missteps, Intel. You are big, but you ain't that big.

[bofh80]

Michael For the MDS mitigations are you disabling SMT/HT in the bios? If not are you planning to add SMT off in the BIOS with mitigation enabled too? (seems rather relevant as intel are the only people saying not to disable it in the bios, as opposed some of the security reports that suggest you need to do both.)

EDIT: of course i just read the comments above after. detailing the same thing. carry on. (blerg)

[devuanxfce]

mds zombie load and kernel is fictional by ibm mcdonalds to prevent linux desktop by slowing it down. i turn these off, devuan and xfce fast stable secure.

[karolherbst]

wait... because the first troll bot wasn't enough, somebody thought it is a good idea to come up with a second one? heh?