Below is a quick post of how OSX speed fairs before and after application of the OSX 10.13.2 update (that fixed Spectre and Meltdown CPU issues).

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I read of up to 30% speed drops with Redis after Spectre and Meltdown patches and was curious how OSX faired.

Here’s what happened last night to one of our busier redis servers before and after patching for meltdown. Using the same 200k/12 minute axes on both: down from ~145k ops/sec to ~95ks ops/sec, or about 35% slower. pic.twitter.com/H6sM0C5i1V

— Nick Craver (@Nick_Craver) January 12, 2018

News

Apple Confirms ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Spectre’ Vulnerabilities Impact All Macs and iOS Devices, Some Fixes Already Released [Updated]

MacOS High Sierra 10.13.2 Update Released with Bug Fixes 

Patches

macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 Combo Update + Supplement Update

Benchmarks (before applying patches)

Here are Cinebench R15 benchmarks on OSX 10.13.1 before upgrading to 10.13.2 on a 2-year-old  core i5 based iMac.

High Sierra 10.13.1, Cinebench R15 and TG Pro running in the background.

CPU: 490 cb points.

Now time to test the GPU in Cinebench…

GPU: 79.33 fps.

Now time to run a Geekbench CPU benchmark.

Here is a breakdown of the scores (2 mins after a fresh reboot and the best of three runs).

Geekbench Single-Core Score: 4433

Geekbench Multi-Core Score: 13,005

Here is a breakdown of advanced GeekBench tests…

I tried to update to 10.3.2 via the software updates but my network was having troubles (human error, my firewall was too aggressive)

I downloaded the manual 10.13.2 update from Apple (not realising my firewall was blocking the app updates (I blocked app updated as soon as spectre news hit so I could write this post)).

I downloaded and opened the 2.8GB 10.13.2 update.

PKG was extracted from the DMG.

10.13.2 Installation Wizard.

I solved my networking issues (disable my firewall) and was able to verify the installation of the 10.13.2 patch and download further 10.13.2 supplemental updates.

I verified all 10.13.2 updates were downloaded and installed and rebooted three times.

2 Minutes after a reboot I ran the same Cinebench R15 CPU benchmark.

CPU: 484 cb 

Cinebench R15 CPU dropped  about 6 points (about a 1.22448979591837% drop, not massive)

Geek bench Single CPU scores fell from 4433 to 4194 (about 5.436498984886081% slower, not as bad as I expected).

Geek Bench Multi CPU scores fell from 13,005 to 12,868 (about 1.053440984236832% slower, not as bad as I expected).

Versions of Software

Cinebench R15

Geek Bench

Results

Cinebench CPU

Graphs are unfortunately zoomed in (I could not find out how to tell Excel to zoom out).  I will update when I find out how to zoom out results.

Green/Left = OSX 10.3.1.

Blue/Right = OSX 10.3.2 (post Spectre/Meltdown Patch).

Cinebench GPU

Green/Left = OSX 10.3.1.

Blue/Right = OSX 10.3.2 (post Spectre/Meltdown Patch).

Geekbench Single CPU

Green/Left = OSX 10.3.1.

Blue/Right = OSX 10.3.2 (post Spectre/Meltdown Patch).

Geekbench Multi CPU

Green/Left = OSX 10.3.1.

Blue/Right = OSX 10.3.2 (pst Spectre/Meltdown Patch.

Geekbench Other

Green= OSX 10.3.1.

Blue = OSX 10.3.2 (post Spectre/Meltdown Patch).

Note: Most results were slightly slower but some were faster post patch.

Conclusion

It looks like performance falls 1-5% on a 2 year old system, not as bad as I was expecting.

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Hope this helps someone.