![]() As they put it, the slowdown can be particularly bad with IO (input-output) applications on a Windows Server system. However, Microsoft made these registry tweaks available for a reason. You really don’t want to use a vulnerable system. Meltdown and Spectre are very serious security flaws that could potentially be exploited by code running on a web page in your web browser. And, if you feel your Windows 7 or 8 system is noticeably slower, the best thing you can do is to upgrade to Windows 10. Even if you’re using Windows 10 with an older CPU, the slowdown should be minimal for most people. Especially if you’re using Windows 10 on modern hardware, you shouldn’t notice a slowdown. WARNING: We strongly recommend against doing this. Windows allows you to disable the Meltdown and Spectre protection after installing the patch, making your system vulnerable to these dangerous attacks but eliminating the performance penalty that comes with the fix. Disable the Protection in the Windows Registry, If You Insist Consider buying used hardware and selling your current stuff if you want to save some money. If your PC doesn’t have the appropriate hardware features and you feel it’s performing slowly, the only way to stay secure and speed things up is to upgrade to newer hardware. RELATED: The Best Way to Save Money on Tech: Buy Used (Though remember, you can speed things up noticeably by upgrading to Windows 10, if you haven’t already.) ![]() If you don’t, you have an older PC and you may see some extra lag. If you see “Performance: GOOD”, you have a modern PC with the appropriate hardware features and you shouldn’t see a noticeable slowdown. It will also tell you whether your PC is protected against Meltdown and Spectre or not. If you’re curious whether your system has the feature that speeds up the patch, we recommend you download and run the Gibson Research Corporation’s InSpectre tool. Without this feature, more of the work has to be done in software, and that slows things down. In fact, Microsoft says that “benchmarks show single-digit slowdowns, but we don’t expect most users to notice a change because these percentages are reflected in milliseconds.” That’s because these Intel CPUs have a PCID (Process-Context Identifiers) feature that help the patch perform better. Modern PCs-that is, “2016-era PCs with Skylake, Kabylake or newer CPU”-perform better with the patch than older PCs. RELATED: How to Check if Your PC or Phone Is Protected Against Meltdown and Spectre You never even have to touch the Windows Store-you can just keep using the desktop and have a modern Windows operating system that performs faster than Windows 7. You can hide all those obnoxious ads in Windows 10 and make it look more like Windows 7, if you like. You can gain more control over Windows 10’s automatic updates or just set your “Active Hours” so they don’t bother you. If you’re not a fan of Windows 10, there are ways to make it less annoying. RELATED: How to Make Windows 10 Look and Act More Like Windows 7 While the first year free upgrade period is technically over, there are still ways to get Windows 10 for free. Rather than avoiding or disabling the patch, just upgrade to Windows 10. We haven’t seen any performance benchmarks from AMD systems yet, so we don’t know how performance has changed. The Meltdown fix doesn’t apply to AMD systems, but the Spectre fix does. Microsoft is talking about Intel CPUs, but there may be some slowdown when using AMD CPUs, too. As Microsoft explains: “Older versions of Windows have a larger performance impact because Windows 7 and Windows 8 have more user-kernel transitions because of legacy design decisions, such as all font rendering taking place in the kernel.” Windows 10 is much newer software, and has many optimizations that the older Windows 7 and 8 just don’t have. In other words, on the same hardware, Microsoft says most people will notice a slowdown on Windows 7 or 8, while most people won’t on Windows 10.
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