@SledDriver @eli_lilly
thank you for report guys.
I have just updated as well. Compared performance of one of the recent projects. It has one Kontakt instance, one Superior drummer 3 and several audio tracks with lots of plugins. Before patch WIndows CPU meter showed 34-35%useage after patch it’s something around 35-36% not big deal after all.
Will be testing more and report back if something significant comes up.
No change in Cubase performance here after patch
Hippo
I’ve disabled windows update for now. I’ve heard mixed replies from people who’ve had the patch. A common complaint seems to be SSD read performance being hit to a noticeable degree for some. The other thing was a slight increase in asio load and CPU usage (1-2%). Not heard many people experiencing other problems so far.
Well, let’s all hope the performance impact has been over-egged, in theory lots of i/o and lots of threads means a lot of context switches - as I said before, DAWs are all about context switches which is why I was pessimistic about performance, but if in the big scheme of things this only adds a couple of percent of CPU load, most of us probably won’t notice. (fingers crossed!)
Similarly, I updated with the patch earlier today on a Win 7 Pro machine. There was no perceivable performance degradation, in my case with Nuendo version 8.1.
Anyone know what’s the name of the windows update/patch?
Ditto. And is there a way to limit the patch update on my W10 Pro system to security patches only - excluding MS from slipping in things like Fall Creators Edition?
I’m still looking for definite recommendations, but as far as I currently understand it I’m not sure that a simple OS patch solves the vulnerability. A firmware/microcode update may be necessary via a BIOS update or whatever, and that could make additional performance losses happen.
Also discussed on GerarSlutz, if anyone cares.
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/1195758-intel-cpus-have-major-security-flaw-fixing-causes-huge-performance-hit.html
For Win 10, It’s called KB4056892. For Win 7 it’s called KB4056897.
Thanks!
However I don’t know the result of installing the Win 10 update manually from the Microsoft Catalog page. My Cumulative Win 10 KB4056892 was installed automatically on my Win 10 Creators Edition with automatic updates. If you’ve turned off updates completely, you’d probably want the Delta edition from the Microsoft Catalog page but I’m not really sure, maybe someone else does.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4056892/windows-10-update-kb4056892
If you’re not using automatic updates in Win 10, there are different update/patch versions for earlier versions of Win 10:
Microsoft is rolling out updates automatically (you will automatically receive the update soon via Windows Update)
but you can manually download the update now if you want to:
1709: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4056892
1703: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=kb4056891
1607: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4056890
1511: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4056888
1507: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4056893
Update any anti-virus software you are using before installing the security patches from Microsoft
In Win10, to see which version you are running, type winver in a command prompt
The OS patch will only protect against Meltdown. You will need a BIOS update to protect against Spectre.
I read a report that the MS patch is preventing boot up on AMD machines, and so MS has withdrawn the W10 patch for machines running AMD.
This was over at the gearslutz thread (in the “Music Computer” section), I can’t swear to it’s veracity, but figured it was worth mentioning …
MS has issued an official statement on it. It affects older AMD CPUs as far as I know, not the latest generation. MS shouldn’t patch for AMD CPUs to begin with until it’s known they’ve been “hacked” as well.
Some more real info.
Great link, just not the content 
Having a Xeon E3-1231v3 system the outlook with the patch in regards of performance loss is concerning!
I read already in another forum about significant performance loss on Win7 system witn such a CPU when using VM…
May Intel spend me some dollars for a decent AMD system?! 
Also wondering if Steinberg wants to comment on the mess Intel made?!
Well, so far I haven’t really seen any reports of decreased performance by DAW users, with the exception of someone essentially getting a broken system after an update. But that’s a bit of a different issue I think.
Anyway, I doubt they feel it necessary to spend the time to test it right now, and I’d be inclined to agree with that. It’d be more valuable if a company such as Scan audio ran benchmarks again since they’ve run through DAWbench on a bunch of different CPUs and could then provide a more specific picture of any degradation.