Intel’s Navin Shenoy released the results of several benchmarks done internally, and the performance hit from the deeply rooted processor problem disclosed by Google researchers is mercifully small for modern chips.
The most recent Kaby Lake processors, introduced late last year, generally see less than 5 percent performance loss in SYSmark14SE, and often none at all. (The margin of error is stated at +/- 3 percent.)
But the biggest hit for those CPUs, and in fact most of the others as well, is on “responsiveness,” which according to the benchmark app’s creators includes “application launches, file launches, web browsing with multiple tabs, multi-tasking, file copying, photo manipulation, file encryption + compression, and background application installation.” So, pretty much all the stuff most people need to do.
Gaming performance seems mostly unaffected, and with most GPUs affected in a more limited way or not at all by the exploits and their mitigations, gamers can probably rest easy.
It’s those with older processors that may see a real slowdown — for example, the sixth-gen Core i7 6700K released in mid-2015. Its performance losses tip toward the 10 percent level, with responsiveness dropping 31 percent on Windows 10. Naturally, that’s my exact setup — and likely the setup of many a user who bought these extremely popular chips back then.
This chart shared by Intel shows the raw numbers, as percentage of a chip’s unpatched performance."
Intel details performance hit for Meltdown fix on affected processors | TechCrunch
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