Time to see if this adds another 5% perf. drop for my 8700K like the previous one. Nothing new for Coffee Lake I see. Hoped Intel released updated mc for its last CacheOut thing.
On a system that doesn't have installed the Intel microcode updates (when it comes to the software part) and using an old BIOS that the microcode is not updated also, will the CPU continue to run in full as before or the CUs also have effect on this, besides the BIOS/MCU combination?
Afaik, there only a slow down when the microcode updates are installed and set to fix on and/or the bios is patched.
Have asked that because at the beginning of all these (01-2018) there where problems with the CUs and with many antivirus programs and there where no MCUs at the moment and everybody (Tech sites e.t.c) where already measuring cpu/system slowdowns. On Win7/8 i guess some patches are in their CUs and that this does not apply on Win10.
Pretty sure the first Meltdown/Spectre patches will have an effect by themselves, how significant, it depends on the CPU. You should go and disable them in the registry if you want to preserve all the initial performance. Mind you, I only took an actual performance hit (about 1-5% depending on test/benchmark) for my 8700K with the C6/CA microcodes from a few months ago. So if you have a Coffee Lake it's likely that you can use all mitigations without losing much performance. The problem is for older CPUs.
If MCUs are not available (or wanted), keeping the Meltdown/Spectre mitigations ON is useless most slowdowns affect 32-bit Windows
I'm also with an i5 3550P (no IGP) but months ago when i disabled all these with InSpectre, system seemed faster. I would like to believe that it wasn't a placebo effect!
Something called KB4524244 also downloaded and seems related to secure boot, pretty small from the SoftwareDistribution cab file but possibly firmware related?