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waltc
Miniboss

Latest MSI bios (2.A0) for my motherboard contains Spectre2 microcode that has slowed down my cpu by 5%-15% in every AIDA64 cpu bench!

I own an MSI Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard, with an R5 1600 (perfectly stable @ 3.8GHz, with 2x8GB DDR4 @ 3200Mhz) and I've noticed that when running the latest MSI bios (2.A0) that every single cpu benchmark contained in AID64 Extreme (or Engineer) slows down by 5%-15% when compared to the performance of the same version of AIDA64 cpu benchmarks when running the bios that preceded it, 2.8.  I have verified this several times, btw, in subsequent reflashes back and forth between bios versions. All UEFI bios settings are the same--everything in the software environment is the same between bios versions. Currently, I am back on 2.8 because of this.  CPU Benchmarks like Cinebench 15.x, which I gather use no OOSE, do not seem to be affected by the Spectre2 microcode in terms of cpu performance, however. (Obviously, I am not concerned only with how the AIDA64 cpu benchmarks perform, but rather with how any similarly written cpu application may perform.)  Example: the AIDA64, 5.97.4600 version, running the Memory Read bench repeatedly shows 2.8 (pre-Spectre2 microcode) 49,xxx mb/s, whereas Memory Read under the 2.A0 bios shows 40,xxx mb/s.  Big drop there.

Under 2.A0, InSpectre tells me that I have full coverage against Spectre, including cpu microcode.  Under 2.8, same version of InSpectre (#8) tells me that while the OS portion of the Spectre defense is present, the cpu microcode is not, and so it equates to vulnerability to Spectre2.  That is how I know that the 2.A0 bios is installing the Spectre2 microcode.

Any comments?  Do the 12nm Ryzen + cpus display this behavior, or is the performance factor mitigated with the x470 chipset and Ryzen +?  Thanks for any insight!

Note: Although the normal MFlash method of updating MSI x370 bios versions will not let the user flash back to an earlier version, MSI provided me with a bios utility that allows me to flash to whatever bios version I want.  Here's a link:

Flash tool[1.05] for MSI UEFI BIOS [from UEFI Shell]

I actually prefer this method to MFlash.

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waltc
Miniboss

UPDATE:     Got a new beta bios from MSI today 5/8 which seems to have solved the slowdown problem while retaining the Spectre2 vulnerability cpu microcode patch.  OK, this beta bios is looking very nice!  The Spectre2 patches are installed but the good news is the big slowdowns I had seen with 2.A0 were no longer evident!  Running just as fast with the new bios as the AIDA64 benches were running with the 2.8 bios!  Very nice, and very pleased with this.

If interested, you can download the bios version from this MSI link:  https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=303203.msg1759105#msg1759105

Further wrapping this entire issue up is the fact that MSI is even now releasing official bios versions (post betas) which correct the performance slowdowns the first Spectre2 bios fixes introduced. Thankfully, looks as if MSI has put this entire issue to bed--Spectre2 vulnerability vanquished *and* the initial performance slowdowns with it...;)  Again, good job MSI!...;)

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