Carbonicdk wrote:
The changes are as undescriptive as always:
1. Improve system stability
Yeah ... "improved stability" and "improved performance" are useless descriptors. Might as well just say "improved version number".
Raja has commented before that ASUS is sometimes
deliberately vague and cryptic about specific details because they don't want their investment in R&D to be ripped off and cloned by their competitors.
I've noted that past claims about "improved stability" usually emphasize the latest-and-greatest hardwares (which have intrinsically better performance) but sometimes make "old" (last week's) hardware actually run with a little less stability or a little less performance. In general, though, ASUS promises of "improved stability" hold consistently true. You can't go wrong with BIOS versions which explicitly address the specific hardware you're using.
While ASUS claims of "improved performance" are very rarely supported with actual before-vs-after benchmark comparisons. Some users report faster, some report slower, some report no difference, some report problems. I'm not a champion overclocker but I do okay, and I've learned after many firmware revisions on many ASUS products that newer is not always better - it's hard to ignore that "improved performance" bait but unless I see a lot of positive feedback to support it then I just won't fix what ain't broken.
The Spectre/Meltdown fixes seem to be code workarounds - that is, they impose extra instructions or boundaries onto implementations which were originally more optimized or streamlined - they impose an unavoidable performance hit. You can choose unobstructed (but unsecure) performance or you can choose suboptimal (but secure) performance, there is simply no way around it (counter to some peoples' expectations, hopes, and claims) until Intel manufactures new parts with these new "fixes" directly embedded within the silicon hardcode.
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[/Korth]