I'm eyeing Threadripper for my next build but beyond that I'm going to choose a motherboard vendor based on the level of support they offer in this scenario. Some observations that I'm making:
* How promptly did they address the issue via official channels, i.e. did they leave users in the dark as they appealed to vendors in their forums (hint: most of them seem to have gone down this route) or did they share updates directly on their official sites, social media accounts, etc.
* Did they provide some estimates as to when users could expect patches?
* How much of their product catalogue were they willing to cover with security updates? Since this is a unique security issue with high impact I would have expected them to cover motherboards at least 4-5 years old.
MSI seems [1] to be fairly proactive right now with patches going back to several X99 motherboards. Asus for example has so far only committed to provide updates for two X99 motherboards.
AMD equipment should be fine, current-gen Ryzen/Threadripper is more than adept at workstation tasks and next-gen Ryzen (named Ryzen 2 and Threadripper 2) will edge out any advantage that Intel's CPUs have.
I have my macbook for work and programming, my PC has windows on it (much to my dislike) and I use it for occasional gaming. I will probably not get new parts anytime soon though as performance is currently fine. Just wondering for when someone asks me to build them a PC.
Well, I built my PC with gaming in mind and chose the i7 8700k. But I got it a week before the spectre/meltdown spectacle. I decided to keep it because of its superior singlecore performance.
for server, Epyic is now finally available to purchase for desktop workstation Threadripper for desktop RyZen
for mobile... not many newer cpus out yet.. need to wait :(