There's a processor patch coming out that might affect game performance

Meltdown/specter exploit patches are finally being announced. The fixes might result in significant slowing of high performance software because the vulnerability is in the prefetching logic that speeds up a processor.

An in depth article can be found here: Meltdown, Spectre: The password theft bugs at the heart of Intel CPUs

A detailed excerpt:

Note that the vulnerability is not the fault of DBG. However, brace for the inevitable band of hooligans who will claim the game is broken and the end is near. Actually it would be awesome if DBG officially mentioned it and said what they planned to do for it. This is just one of those unpredictable things that everyone has to deal with now. And by the way, seek out the patches for your own computers. Note: despite the title of the article, AMD is also affected to an extent that varies with the situation.

It's amusing that they say gamers won't be affected. but we will, because we fall under the "slamming the network" category:

 

This will have little to no effect on games though so this is kinda off topic...

 

I first went to Intel, they punted me to "the OEM" but since my PC is custom that's no help. I didn't feel like opening my PC or digging around finding the docs for the motherboard type. Since it's Windows 7, Windows Update did not provide it. I had to go to the download page suggested about midway through the Q&A thread, and know whether I had x64 or not.

Since that was a bit of a dance to find it, I thought I'd post a link to the thread on the official MS forums: Meltdown and Spectre

The cool techy bit about this is that computers tell time very well, but as closely as they monitor time, with increased detail comes increased ambiguity. Just like physics has been predicting for a long time, the more closely you observe something the better it hides. Including the time. Lovers of time travel stories should appreciate this technical revelation. It made me go to amazon and look for sci fi about it.

 

Yes, pretty much no effect on player game side.. but server side should be effected, specially data center and heavy virtualized system.. So.. more lag.