If you read our previous article on the matter, it came within 24 hours of the emergency Windows 10 patch release intended to address the Meltdown vulnerability. We ran tests that made sense from the perspective of a desktop user and we found there was virtually no impact on gaming performance and no impact for content creators. There were however a few troubling results for NVMe storage devices, mostly impacting 4K read performance. Since then other fellow tech media outlets have published similar findings.
However the Windows patch only addressed Meltdown, and by now you’ve no doubt become familiar of the second vulnerability called Spectre. Because Spectre is the result of a fundamental CPU design flaw, it can’t be fixed, at least not entirely. The firmware update needed to correct it mitigates the problem, but doesn’t completely address the vulnerability.
This is still primarily an Intel CPU flaw. AMD's official word is that one of the two Spectre variants doesn’t impact them at all, while the one that does is easily resolved by a software update that shouldn’t impact performance in any meaningful way. Variant "three" which is Meltdown, doesn’t impact AMD at all. We've yet to properly test any AMD CPU ourselves, but this is based on the official information we have so far.
As of writing, the only motherboard manufacturer to release an update is Asus and so far they’ve only addressed their Z370 series of motherboards.
