Intel has begun attaching a license clause prohibiting comparative benchmarking to its CPU microcode updates (archived). Intel has spent the past year deluged with reports of critical flaws in their CPUs related to speed optimizations which fundamentally compromise the ability of their chips to be secure, especially in multi user systems. This fumbling by Intel to supress comparative benchmarks between patched and unpatched chips is only their latest attempt to paper over how much of their chips' fradulent speed advantage is lost with anything resembling effective mitigations1 for these engineered holes.
Note: It should be assumed these patches are not effective mitigations. ↩