Meltdown & Spectre Patches Impacting Older Systems

[Trevor.Dennis]

I don't 'think' I have seen any threads about the Intel Kernel problem, and Meltdown and Spectre patches to Windows that are supposed to address them.  Tom's Hardware put up two articles today, saying that the patches have a greater impact on performance with older systems, and that some older AMD CPU'd systems are unable to boot after installing the patches.

Meltdown, Spectre Patch Is Making Some Old AMD PCs Unbootable

Spectre Patch Causes 'Significant Slowdown' On Older OS, Chips

I answered a thread today where the OP was using CS2 on a Windows Vista system, and I am sure that not all users have the latest hardware and operating systems, so best to be aware.  My wife does not use Photoshop, but her computer uses a two core AMD Q9550 which must be ten years old, and I am disabling auto updates on her system just in case.  It only has to hold together until I get my new build up and running, when I'll give her my 3930K system with 32Gb RAM and decent drives.

[joe_e_e]

Hello Trevor,

I have an old Core 2 Quad processor and an Nvidia Quadro M2000 running Windows 10.  I was able to edit 4K videos using H.264 or CineForm 720p proxies without any issues last year.  Now, after the latest Meltdown and Spectre patches for Windows 10 and Nvidia drivers and running the latest Premiere Pro CC, I opened one of my projects and the CPU is 100% while previewing at 1/8 without any effects in Premiere Pro and the video is still stuttering.  This is completely unusable.  The really odd thing is that playing the proxies via the default Windows 10 app is not a problem at all (both CPU and GPU average around 10% with occasional peaks to 20%).

Is there anything special I need to tweak in the Premiere Pro settings to make it work again (it has been updated since I edited some of my projects last year)?  It is unreasonable that Premiere Pro needs more than 40-times (20->100% at 1/8) more CPU than the default app.

Best regards,

Karol

[michalo40907577]

You see, I've noticed the same issue. I was using my machine to stitch and edit 360 4K video, and there was no problems until CC2018 roll out. I think the majority of the performance issues comes from ADOBE CC2018 rather than Windows etc.

[joe_e_e]

Yes, the situation is somewhat hard to analyse.  Windows 10 got the Meltdown&Spectre patch, Nvidia released new drivers (with a Spectre patch, too), and then we have Premiere Pro CC 2018.  I don't know how to test each issue in isolation.  However, here being on an Adobe forum, could anyone from Adobe say something about Premiere Pro CC 2018 performance?  Could perhaps Adobe help with some of the performance issues (any optimisation plans in your backlog)?

/Karol

[D Fosse]

Everybody - keep in mind that video driver updates come bundled with the other updates. Just because it started after the spectre/meltdown patch - or even the CC update! - doesn't mean that's the cause.

Just keep an open mind. I'm sure we'd see a rush of complaints if this patch generally broke something, and we haven't. I've certainly not noticed anything (one Win7 machine and one Win10) - although it should be said I don't do much video.

[davescm]

I've not noticed any slowdown here Trevor, on stills using Photoshop or video using After Effects and Premiere Pro. I did dig out some 5000px Photoshop brush timings from an older thread and ran them again here . There was no difference.

(Windows 10 ver1709; 3930k;  64GB RAM; and AMD7970 3GB GPU)

Dave

[davidc1815]

Trevor you missed my post -

Photoshop slower loading since Windows 10 update KB4056892

KB4056892 contained among other things, the security patches.

It gave my old 3770k system a severe nervous breakdown which was only healed with the transplant of a fresh install of W10.  It's now a happy camper. 

David