Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, Flying Fox, morphine
Glorious wrote:I believe there is a way to do something similar with Windows, but someone more knowledgeable will have to chime in.
Glorious wrote:If you are running linux, just use whatever intel microcode package your distro provides.
Ubtuntu updated theirs just 3 days after Intel released the microcode.
That's way safer than messing with firmware like that, and it accomplishes the same thing.
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I believe there is a way to do something similar with Windows, but someone more knowledgeable will have to chime in.
captaintrav wrote:Just as a note, there is microcode updates for all kinds of processors in the package, but Intel hasn't released any *new* microcode updates for anything older than Haswell. I suppose they had to draw a line somewhere, but especially in the data center 5 years seems fairly short.
captaintrav wrote:Just as a note, there is microcode updates for all kinds of processors in the package, but Intel hasn't released any *new* microcode updates for anything older than Haswell.
JBI wrote:Not necessarily. In the datacenter, gains in performance/watt over the past 5 years may make it worthwhile to upgrade even if the old hardware's performance is adequate for the workload in absolute terms.
Glorious wrote:captaintrav wrote:Just as a note, there is microcode updates for all kinds of processors in the package, but Intel hasn't released any *new* microcode updates for anything older than Haswell.
Well, sure, but if it isn't available, it simply isn't available whether you are hacking it into the firmware or using your distro's package.
But, yes, there isn't anything available for ivy-bridge or older.JBI wrote:Not necessarily. In the datacenter, gains in performance/watt over the past 5 years may make it worthwhile to upgrade even if the old hardware's performance is adequate for the workload in absolute terms.
Also my company seems to lease regular servers on a 4 year basis, I'm not an expert on datacenter purchasing or anything, but you can regularly see 4-5 year old enterprise hardware showing up on refurb/resale sites like it's on a schedule.
just brew it! wrote:captaintrav wrote:Just as a note, there is microcode updates for all kinds of processors in the package, but Intel hasn't released any *new* microcode updates for anything older than Haswell. I suppose they had to draw a line somewhere, but especially in the data center 5 years seems fairly short.
Not necessarily. In the datacenter, gains in performance/watt over the past 5 years may make it worthwhile to upgrade even if the old hardware's performance is adequate for the workload in absolute terms. Electricity is a significant chunk of TCO for systems that are powered up 24x7.
captaintrav wrote:We don't lease stuff, we run it into the ground. We definitely have stuff older than Haswell in the lab, and I know some of our AIX stuff is really old.
Glorious wrote:captaintrav wrote:Just as a note, there is microcode updates for all kinds of processors in the package, but Intel hasn't released any *new* microcode updates for anything older than Haswell.
Well, sure, but if it isn't available, it simply isn't available whether you are hacking it into the firmware or using your distro's package.
But, yes, there isn't anything available for ivy-bridge or older.JBI wrote:Not necessarily. In the datacenter, gains in performance/watt over the past 5 years may make it worthwhile to upgrade even if the old hardware's performance is adequate for the workload in absolute terms.
Also my company seems to lease regular servers on a 4 year basis, I'm not an expert on datacenter purchasing or anything, but you can regularly see 4-5 year old enterprise hardware showing up on refurb/resale sites like it's on a schedule.
captaintrav wrote:I'm not exactly an expert, but my father was an accountant. Kind of like leasing an automobile, leasing is great for maintaining a fixed cost over a long period of time, but ends up costing you more in the long run generally speaking. But.... tax laws make it advantageous if not at least simpler to lease equipment. If you lease, it doesn't become a captial asset that needs to have depreciation calculated on, and in many cases becomes a bigger tax write off than if you bought it outright. Whereas you can write off the cost of the lease or at least a percentage that stays the same over time, you can only write off a decreasing percentage of the assets each year. For technology this is quite an issue since a lot of the time the real world value of tech depreciates faster than the tax code thinks it ought to. So the old equipment coming up for refurb/resale has as much to do with accounting practices as it does obsolescence.
We've crunched the numbers on the desktop side of things and will soon cease leasing those as well, it just creates budgeting challenges. Easier to budget 500k for new laptops spread over 3 years every three years than one 500k at a shot every 3.5, but with leasing penalties and interest it is worth it to get off the leasing train.
just brew it! wrote:IIRC an OCed K6-III+ was capable of performing on par with the lower-clocked Durons.
Ryu Connor wrote:Glorious wrote:I believe there is a way to do something similar with Windows, but someone more knowledgeable will have to chime in.
Windows does have the ability, but end users can't manage it.
captaintrav wrote:Just as a note, there is microcode updates for all kinds of processors in the package, but Intel hasn't released any *new* microcode updates for anything older than Haswell. I suppose they had to draw a line somewhere, but especially in the data center 5 years seems fairly short.
JosiahBradley wrote:Sadly I tried the Window's microcode patching using the VMWare tool and it does *NOT* patch it because Windows loads it's own microcode driver AFTER the part of the kernel that is running the patch, so it does not enable the protection.
Redocbew wrote:Yeah, that would be the reason for the extra trickery. I have no idea if that would work, just speculating(heh) on alternatives that are less scary.
Assuming that the whole reason for using a USB drive is that there isn't a Linux install on disk, then yeah, it probably wouldn't. So just ignore me.
JBI wrote:This, of course, assumes that microcode patches survive a warm boot; the BIOS may overwrite with whatever microcode the BIOS has, negating the effect of the patch.
Glorious wrote:JBI wrote:This, of course, assumes that microcode patches survive a warm boot; the BIOS may overwrite with whatever microcode the BIOS has, negating the effect of the patch.
My understanding is that the update mechanism (EDIT: the one on the intel chip) won't let you "update" to an older version.
So if it's there, it's there.