No Slowdowns, MacXDVD Products Survive Meltdown and Spectre Patches' Speed Hits

Jan.30, 2018

Two critical security flaws in modern computers are forcing all PC and Mac users to install the Spectre/Meltdown patches, which acknowledged by Intel data, will slow down personal computers by 2%-10% and increase CPU utilization. But with MacXDVD Software products, there are zero slowdowns. While massive programs see noticeable speed loss after the patches installed, MacX DVD video converter holds its own against the CPU performance hit to let users rip DVD, convert videos, edit clips and download movies etc. at the world's fastest speed, as always.

2018's New Year starts with two serious CPU vulnerabilities — dubbed Meltdown and Spectre. Meltdown is a bug that "breaks the most fundamental isolation between user applications and the operating system" and allows an attacker to read kernel memory. Spectre is a bug that "breaks the isolation between different applications" and puts Intel, AMD and ARM-based devices at risk of attacks that can access the secret information. The two vulnerabilities affect devices running nearly all the Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS and other operating systems.

Soon after the two exploits hit headlines, Intel, system vendors, processor manufacturers and others batten down the hatches against the security vulnerabilities. The fixes, however, will not only trigger unexpected reboots, but also degrade CPU performance. The Meltdown patch is to place the kernel in an area of the memory space that is protected from access by other programs. The fix involves extra steps, namely dumping and reloading kernel data and thus slows things down. And Spectre is more complicated to resolve.

According to Intel, the current software patches show a CPU performance slowdowns ranging from 2% to 10%. What's more, the CPU "responsiveness" sees a much bigger hit, ranging from 12% to 21%. And these are Intel's conservative figures.

The flaws will haunt us for years before a permanent solution that involves fundamental changes to CPU architecture design choices reach the market. By far, your best bet is to replace the CPU, or you have to put up with slower performance in the meantime. The slowdowns will have a significant impact on even regular CPU-intensive tasks such as video conversion. But unique tech helps real ace player survive the impact from Spectre, Meltdown fixes. While sweeping Mac apps are paralyzed by the patch performance hit, MacXDVD has tested zero speed loss, being the only company by far that announced unaffected.

How can MacXDVD survive the flaws?

Most DVD video converters would utilize as much of the CPU as possible to achieve the fastest processing speed. For example, Handbrake uses CPU at 99%-100% when converting. If the video size is big, the computer shuts down the task. MacXDVD toolkit, instead, generates the fastest results with the least utilization of CPU. The strong technical backup of QSV hardware acceleration tech and customized transcoding module guarantees MacXDVD a head start on the speed hit from Spectre and Meltdown fixes.

Specifically, the video encoding task is processed by a dedicated video transcoding kernel where a fixed encode engine is optimized for speed and designed to reduce CPU utilization. Combined with the unique QSV tech, both software and hardware are fully utilized to boost the speed. Now the overall encode capability is accelerated to a speed that no other program can offer.

According to the company's internal speed test, MacXDVD's products show performances as below:
MacX DVD Ripper Pro - the fastest DVD ripper on the market. It rips all kinds of classic and new DVDs (incl. 99-title DVDs, Workout DVDs and damaged DVDs) to mp4, mov, avi, mkv, iso image, flv and other digital formats with original quality. The DVD ripper slashes the DVD ripping time by over 500% than other tools with an avg. speed of 300-900fps. Indicated by the newest test, the patches enlarge the speed differences between MacX ripper and Handbrake from 180% to 300%.

MacX Video Converter Pro - the No.1 fast known video converter for SD, HD and UHD videos. It's designed to convert videos among MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, MTS, HEVC, H.265, AVCHD, 3GP etc. for any phones, tablets, TVs, game consoles, and other displays or storages. The QSV tech gives the converter a 5x faster speed advantage over competitions. Better yet, the company's recently-added Auto Copy mode further improves the speed. Now, it takes no more than 1 minute to convert a full movie.

Pricing and Availability

MacX DVD Ripper Pro and MacX Video Converter Pro are priced at $67.95 and $59.95 respectively. Now the MacX Suite is 58% off at $49.95 only during MacXDVD 2018 Winter Special Offer.

About MacXDVD Software, Inc.

MacXDVD Software is a division of Digiarty Software Company, owns a professional multimedia software development team, providing a range of products for Macintosh Computer users, including MacX Video Converter, MacX DVD Ripper, DVD Author, DVD backup tools, etc, series of apps for Apple video player, and iPhone, iPad 2D and 3D video games. More information, please visit http://www.macxdvd.com.