I looked at both results. I'm not an engineer, so I don't claim to completely understand all the ins and outs of Meltdown, but I understand enough to know they've removed "speculative execution". As such, it seems to me that the CPU should take longer to load/offload to compensate for the work of security checking every operation that the Kernel processes. Wouldn't this cause a drop in CPU performance numbers based on this kind of workload?
What I saw between the two comparisons is that memory and 2d video performance dropped significantly in the second test. I guess I can understand if the added workload is overtaxing the memory [though I have a hard time believing we suddenly need more than 8 gig for basic operations] but I'm really confused about the 2d video drop. Obviously there's integration between CPU instructions and GPU functionality, but is it really that much to cause a 220ish point drop? I get a 120ish point drop CPU in synthetic benchmarks is more than margin of error but it seems the system overall is taking a bigger hit then I'd anticipated.
Of course I have to balance that against it being a 2 core 15w ULV cpu, but I'm surprised at the overall numbers in general. Does day to day operation feel any different? Obviously synthetic benchmarks are designed to completely max systems, but I'm very curious as to the day to day impact on latency and workflow.
