Yeah but this is Intel, they’re not capable of doing something the most efficient way possible. E cores use less power than P cores, but that doesn’t mean they’re very good at getting the job done using the least amount of power. Currently (using Intel’s management) 12th and 13th gen start a task on the P cores, and if it runs for longer than X time it gets shifted over to the E cores where it can churn away. Meteor lake has 3 stages of things since there’s P cores, E cores, and LP E cores. If I remember right Meteor lake starts a task on the LP E cores, then shifts it to P cores, then shifts it to the E cores if it’s taking too long. But Intel likes to blast the power away with turbo boost and runs the E cores way past their actual efficient zone unless you wrangle them back down. Sometimes it’s faster to blast the task away on the P cores then return to idle, other times letting it churn away on the E cores forever is the best way.
Also all those extra cores being active still uses power. So if you went from a 4 core CPU to a 4 + 4 cpu now you have all the same power draw as the old one, plus the extra 4 efficient cores sipping at even more power. I think that’s where 12th gen really suffers the most.
They’re not really made for power efficiency, but rather space efficiency. ~4 E-cores fit into the size of a P-core.
They’re there to boost multi-core performance without having a huge die-size or increasing latency in the P-cores when doing lightly threaded tasks, essentially.
12th gen and up intel CPUs. All but a few have P and E cores.
Also like one weird i5 from about 10th gen.
I have a mobile 11th i7 one, sounds like no benefits 😞
Same boat. Good news is 11th gen generally gets better battery life than 12th+ because all those extra cores still eat power.
Bad news is I already get as bad as 30 minutes of battery life so IDK how 12th gen can be even worse.
I thought you saved power because the e-cores are more efficient for the same workload?
Yeah but this is Intel, they’re not capable of doing something the most efficient way possible. E cores use less power than P cores, but that doesn’t mean they’re very good at getting the job done using the least amount of power. Currently (using Intel’s management) 12th and 13th gen start a task on the P cores, and if it runs for longer than X time it gets shifted over to the E cores where it can churn away. Meteor lake has 3 stages of things since there’s P cores, E cores, and LP E cores. If I remember right Meteor lake starts a task on the LP E cores, then shifts it to P cores, then shifts it to the E cores if it’s taking too long. But Intel likes to blast the power away with turbo boost and runs the E cores way past their actual efficient zone unless you wrangle them back down. Sometimes it’s faster to blast the task away on the P cores then return to idle, other times letting it churn away on the E cores forever is the best way.
Also all those extra cores being active still uses power. So if you went from a 4 core CPU to a 4 + 4 cpu now you have all the same power draw as the old one, plus the extra 4 efficient cores sipping at even more power. I think that’s where 12th gen really suffers the most.
Spoilers: they are efficient in space, not really power
So for multicore workloads they are actually power efficient because you get more throughput (more performance iso power)
But for idle that has no benefit
They’re not really made for power efficiency, but rather space efficiency. ~4 E-cores fit into the size of a P-core.
They’re there to boost multi-core performance without having a huge die-size or increasing latency in the P-cores when doing lightly threaded tasks, essentially.
My battery life is pretty good, the power profiles daemon is actually working very well.