InSpectre, am I protected against Spectre and Meltdown? Does it affect performance?

[rul3s]

As a result of the two major security flaws that came out of Intel, Meltdown and Spectre, patches were released to fix them, but these patches can affect the performance of our PC little or a lot.
As a general rule, everything that is more equal or newer than the 3XXX series of Intel, for example an i5 3400, i7 4790, etc... affects little to the performance, but it does affect.
Everything that is prior to that series, i5 2500K, i7 920, Core2Quad q6600, etc... this patch affects a lot.
That is why there is a utility with which you can see if you have the patches installed, active and even if they affect a lot or little to your CPU.
You can check this with the InSpectre tool and download it from here: https://www.grc.com/inspectre.htm

Here you can see if:

You are protected from Meltdown
This one, if you have the Windows updates active, you probably are, since it is patched with a Windows update.

You are protected from Spectre
This one will probably show you that you are not, since to be protected from Spectre you have to update the "microcode" of your CPU, and this is not updated directly on the CPU but on the BIOS of your motherboard.
Most manufacturers have said that they will not update bios prior to the 6XXX series of Intel, for example I have an i7 4790K and I don't have a BIOS update with the new microcode, so I am unprotected against Spectre.

If Intel has released a new "microcode" for your CPU
In relation to the previous, one thing is that Intel has released an update to the microcode of your CPU, and another that the manufacturer of your motherboard has released a bios update with this new microcode.
So, as a rule, Intel has updated all microcodes up to the second generation of i3/i5/i7 (i5 2500k, etc...), although then the motherboard manufacturers have not followed suit.

What impact does the patch have on your CPU
Well, if your CPU is relatively new, it shouldn't affect much the performance of both patches, although if it is prior to or equal to the 2XXX series of Intel... get ready.

How did I come to this?
I discovered all this as a result of a second PC that I built, with a Xeon on a 775 board (equivalent to a Core2Quad Q9650) which, after applying the Windows updates, it was noticeable that it became slower, browsing the internet, in games, etc...
As a curiosity, it is a Xeon X5460 overclocked to 4GHz and with the patch it is difficult to play PUBG and without it, disabling it, you can play perfectly between 60-70FPS.

Can I disable the patch with "security"? How do I do it?
Well, this is the same as going with antivirus or without antivirus, if you are a cautious person, who watches what you run and the websites you visit, you can go without the patches without problems just as a responsible person can walk without antivirus on the computer without the slightest problem.
To do this, you just have to run the "inspectre" tool as administrator, click on disable meltdown and/or disable spectre and restart the PC. We can run the tool again to verify that the patches have been disabled.

Regards!