You may still not be clear about this new designation of Intel cores. E-Cores are single cores of modest performance and high efficiency, intended for light tasks such as browsing the Internet. On the other hand, P-Cores are the “old-fashioned” cores, designed for heavy tasks such as playing games, photo and/or video editing, etc.
Windows is not designed for these cores
The first thing you should know is that Microsoft had never explored this type of cores. Although there are several Windows optimized for ARM architecture processors and similar, it is not a complete implementation. Windows actually works on ARM as a kind of emulation, it is not specifically designed for this architecture.
This is because historically Microsoft has worked with “simple” processors that only had one type of core. As Intel has introduced a new design and being the largest PC processor manufacturer in the world, they have had to adapt. So much so that Windows 11 is nothing more than a “big update” to Windows 10 to adapt to the E-Cores.
Come on, it’s a kind of patch and this is bad. It seems that he is not getting the most out of the E-Cores, either because he does not know when to use them or he uses them inappropriately.
E-Core performance problem
You should know that, according to Intel, the E-Core in heavy tasks how games would be complement of the P-Cores. Basically, they would help in computing tasks, allowing additional performance to be gained. But, it seems that this is not the case.
TechPowerUp shows how Atlas Fallen improves without efficient cores activated. Specifically, under DirectX 12 with the E-Core active eThe game runs at an average of 136FPSwhile with these disabled shoots at 187FPS. Low Vulkan we have something similar, since with the E-Cores assets works for some 152FPS and with these disabled we go to the 197FPS. These tests have been carried out with an Intel Core i9-13900K that has 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores.
It seems that this is not the norm
We have found a video from DannyzReviews that seems to “dismantle” this statement. According to the results shown, gaming performance worsens (or barely changes) if the E-Cores are deactivated. There is only one case where performance worsens significantly and that is in the Metro Exodus Enhaced. This game with the efficient cores shows 145 FPS, but with them disabled it jumps to 161 FPS.
Something interesting is that there are many games in which performance hardly suffers significant variations, which shows that they don’t contribute much either.
| Game | Active E-Cores | E-Cores Disabled |
|---|---|---|
| Atlas Fallen (DX12) | 136FPS | 187FPS |
| Atlas Fallen (Vulkan) | 152FPS | 197FPS |
| A Plague Tale Requiem | 167FPS | 166FPS |
| Marvel’s Spider Man Remastered | 194FPS | 184FPS |
| Returnal | 194FPS | 193FPS |
| Death Stranding | 240FPS | 240FPS |
| Total War Warhammer III | 263FPS | 250FPS |
| Microsoft Flight Simulator | 141 FPS | 139FPS |
| Gears 5 | 249FPS | 229FPS |
| Metro Exodus Enhaced | 145FPS | 161FPS |
| CoD Modern Warfare 2 | 320FPS | 301FPS |
| CSGO | 829FPS | 788FPS |
Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2 catch our attention, as they are two great games. This is most likely due to a lack of optimization for these cores. Something interesting is that Watch Dogs Legion, Control and Forza Horizon 5 remain unchanged. It may be because they do not use the efficient cores of Intel processors, although we cannot guarantee this either.
We want to highlight that the CS:GO game appears here, not its subsequent update, since these performance tests are carried out before the Valve game update.
We see that, as a general rule, we see that games get a performance improvement. It does not happen in all cases, but it is not new either. It is normal for games to have performance discrepancies depending on the components. This may be due to the development engine or programming structure, among many other factors.
