Intel Will No Longer Issue Spectre Patch For Some Older Chips

[10tacle]

Sandy Bridge isn't on the list of chips not getting the patch.

Irrelevant to the point of Intel's lack of real processor tech advancement and us not needing to upgrade every generation or two like in the old days. Hence, holding on to older chipsets for a lot longer than in years past. There was a big performance boost from the Core 2 Duo chipset to the first generation i-series and that warranted an upgrade. Since then, each new tick-tock generation has merely been incremental. A lot of people like me don't just throw their outdated hardware in the trash but instead use them in backup systems and as in my case, a retro gaming rig. If you don't get the point, I guess Intel won't either.

 

[Martell1977]

Buys a $150 chip 10 years ago....
Threatens not to buy another Intel cause there chip is no longer supported.
Buys a new AMD chip and keeps that for 10 years.....
Yea, you're the type of consumer companies fear losing, lol

I'm one of those people that upgrades when the current system no longer meets my needs. The one in my sig was built in Dec 2010(only upgraded the GPU since)and still going strong. Runs Forza Horizon 3 perfectly, even being older. If Intel were making serious performance gains and software were challenging systems more on the CPU side I might be compelled to upgrade.

I don't care if Intel or AMD likes my upgrade habits, but if there were good reasons to upgrade sooner, I would. However, when I am ready to upgrade, I will take into account a companies customer service history, along with the price/performance.

 

[mgallo848]

1: Believe me I get the point. I literally have about a dozen old CPU's lying around that I recently started to get rid of myself but I won't complain that some company doesn't "update or support" something I purchased from 10 years ago. Let it go, it's time to move on.
2: Yes, I also understand and partially agree with your "Intel's lack of real processor tech advancement" statement. You can also blame AMD for not providing (until Ryzen) any real competition to push Intel any further than they've had to.

 

[cryoburner]

So basically my ten year old Wolfdale E8400 retro gaming PC is going to be hung out to dry.

It's not like the system is just going to stop functioning. It might have a security vulnerability, but if it's primarily used for playing older games, that might not be that big of a concern. And considering that the performance impact of a patch for these older processors would likely be greater, you might not not want to install it anyway even if they were to release one.

 

[ElectrO_90]

Well everyone better start exploiting it then, so something will be done. Most ATM's use Intel and old Software/Hardware.
I am sure someone clever enough can probably start hacking them if this flaw is not fixed.

 

[Myrmidonas]

For those interested the current "microcode-update-guidance" list is here.

 

[muser99]

The Windows 10 Skip Ahead Update, Build 17639 pre-release Spring Creators Update, is using the latest microcode from Intel on both my i7-2600 and i7-920.

The Inspectre tool now shows that both Spectre and Meltdown as fixed on both my processors.

HWinfo also shows the microcode is updated on both to match Intel's March guidance.

The i7-920 is labeled as "Stopped" in the Intel April's Intel guidance yet HWinfo shows it has been updated by Build 17369!

 

[Myrmidonas]

The Windows 10 Skip Ahead Update, Build 17369 pre-release Spring Creators Update, is using the latest microcode from Intel on both my i7-2600 and i7-920.

The Inspectre tool now shows that both Spectre and Meltdown as fixed on both my processors.

HWinfo also shows the microcode is updated on both to match Intel's March guidance.

The i7-920 is labeled as "Stopped" in the Intel April's Intel guidance yet HWinfo shows it has been updated by Build 17369!

Unless you updated the BIOS on both machines by yourself no microcode was installed on your windows machines. I suspect you have mistaken windows updates with BIOS updates.

 

[muser99]

The Windows 10 Skip Ahead Update, Build 17639 pre-release Spring Creators Update, is using the latest microcode from Intel on both my i7-2600 and i7-920.

The Inspectre tool now shows that both Spectre and Meltdown as fixed on both my processors.

HWinfo also shows the microcode is updated on both to match Intel's March guidance.

The i7-920 is labeled as "Stopped" in the Intel April's Intel guidance yet HWinfo shows it has been updated by Build 17369!

Unless you updated the BIOS on both machines by yourself no microcode was installed on your windows machines. I suspect you have mistaken windows updates with BIOS updates.

Is see your point but NO! I have not updated the microcode via the BIOS on either machine. Windows build 17639 is loading the latest Intel microcode during boot.

Head over to page 6 at the forum linked below to see the details.

https://www.tenforums.com/windows-10-news/107409-announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-skip-ahead-build-17639-april-4-a-6.html

 

[schlarbjeff]

Maybe the right idea for Gamers....not sure every large corporation replaces every single CPU every three years....
Why was it that COBOL became "popular" again in the last years of the last Century...

 

[xudaiqing]

They are sold around 2008 or earlier, and definitely come with pre windows 7 OSs. If you are running that kind of system in business, you have much bigger problems than Spectre.
It sure a bad news for home user though.

 

[Karadjgne]

Machines in large corporations run as long as they are useful. When costs to repair and labor times get close to how much it costs to replace, they get replaced. If production time is hampered by slow os/machines, they get upgraded or replaced. In large corporations it's highly doubtful to run into anything older than 2012 as they'll get rotated out. This doesn't cost as much overall since they donate the old machines to schools, goodwill etc and get tax breaks as well. The only times the really old stuff is kept alive is if it's running specialized software, where there's no OS upgrade, my wife's home stuff has not been updated, so will only run on win7/server 2000 but actually runs faster and smoother under WinXP. And for some odd reason, there's still a market for those old okidata dot matrix printers...