Conclusion
Even the Windows update against Meltdown costs on Intel CPUs performance. While Windows 10 has little impact on the tested applications or on the average FPS of the games - neither on a Kaby Lake nor on a Sandy Bridge CPU. But considering the fram times of the games (-4%) and the SSD performance with random accesses with small files (-6%) on Kaby Lake, things look quite different. And Sandy Bridge strikes it even harder: five percent loses the system in games in Windows 10, eleven in Windows 7.
The previously available only on the system with Core i7-7700K microcode update doubled there the performance losses again. This corresponds in the end approximately in a downgrade to the previous CPU generation. The Specter countermeasures Kaby Lake also severely hit the SSD throughput: The performance of random access drops by up to 40 percent. This is the current major concerns of database providers and users justified.
The extent to which Sandy Bridge will be affected by Specter countermeasures in applications and games is currently speculation - it may seem questionable whether there will be any updates. At any rate, the Core i5-2500K already loses more power than the Core i7-7700K with the combination of Windows Update and microcode update.
Only a matter of time is the availability of microcode updates for AMD Ryzen, because those days were made available to the motherboard manufacturers. Currently, it can be stated: Without meltdown vulnerability, power losses from the inactive meltdown patch are also eliminated. However, the editors will keep an eye on what Specter protection will look like.
This also applies to many other aspects: Three CPU architectures with a graphics card in seven benchmarks on two operating systems are far from covering the whole field of the potential impact of serious security vulnerabilities and their correction. Covering everything is impossible. Hints and suggestions are still welcome in the comments.