On Intel Raptor Lake, any truth to the rumors that disabling all e-cores hurts single threaded performance of the p-cores??

Wolverine2349 · 9 Jan 2023 at 16:22

Armageus said:
Can't see that being correct - they will have coded it to work with all variations of E-Cores and P-Cores from 0 E-Cores, to 0-P Cores and all variations in between.

Thread Director isn't entirely software based either, with 13xxx chips getting an update version of the thread director hardware, so whatever your thoughts on Windows 10 are also likely to be wrong, as thread director will still make decisions at a hardware level

Hardware needs OS level support. Windows 11 acts weird with CPUZ single thread score fluctuations badly with e cores off. Win10 e cores off CPUZ single thread score is consistent meaning proof e cores off do not hurt performance as thread director not there to interfere.

Robert896r1 · 9 Jan 2023 at 16:58

13900k and NH-D15S

Pure clown show. Thread has jumped the shark.

Bencher · 9 Jan 2023 at 17:11

Wolverine2349 said:
You have insane cooling. I cannot touch higher than 5.6GHz on p cores even with e cores off on an NH-D15S let alone with them on.

Ring is so easy to clock to 5GHz with off. With them on no way. Games like ring clock and RAM speed and fast all p core clock speed.

Insane cooling? I have a u12a, lol

Bencher · 9 Jan 2023 at 17:37

Robert896r1 said:
13900k and NH-D15S

Pure clown show. Thread has jumped the shark

His cooler is fine, it's the user that's the problem.

u12a with a 95c temp limit, handle 330w in ycruncher

Wolverine2349 · 9 Jan 2023 at 18:07

Bencher said:
His cooler is fine, it's the user that's the problem.

u12a with a 95c temp limit, handle 330w in ycruncher

Lol 330 watt fine temps on U12a. I tested NH-D15 at stock and loading CInebench it throttles immediately and temps hit 102C like right away and 340 watts of power. ANd 340 watts will degrade CPU as ut is over 254 watt Intel limit, And this is with P cores downclocking themselves to like 5.3GHz. Can run them 5.6GHz easy with e-cores off and no throttling at all.

You must have a rare 1% 13900K platinum binned CPU to cool it ok with a U12a cooler and everything turned on.

Bencher · 9 Jan 2023 at 18:23

Wolverine2349 said:
Lol 330 watt fine temps on U12a. I tested NH-D15 at stock and loading CInebench it throttles immediately and temps hit 102C like right away and 340 watts of power. ANd 340 watts will degrade CPU as ut is over 254 watt Intel limit, And this is with P cores downclocking themselves to like 5.3GHz. Can run them 5.6GHz easy with e-cores off and no throttling at all.

You must have a rare 1% 13900K platinum binned CPU to cool it ok with a U12a cooler and everything turned on.

I have a pretty average chip, 150 force according to MSI, so yeah, nowhere near the 1% top binned.

Gazb · 15 Jan 2023 at 16:14

Harshell123 said:
Have you noticed anymore heat as a result of turning off the e-cores?

I have had to do this on my 13900k to make Star Citizen playable. Although it’s much better, I’ve noticed my temps going up a little bit.

Star Citizen really likes CPU resources and spawning threads, and on the hybrid chips it will put threads on the E cores and then you get stutters due to it having to wait on the slower cores. However people have tested and you don't have to disable the E cores, you should use Process Lasso and set Star Citizen to use the Physical P Cores.

There are other games out there that are also similarly affected, but as Star Citizen is so heavily CPU bound at the moment and the frame rates are lower, it's the easiest to notice the issue in.
I do wonder if we're gonna get a similar issue (but to a lesser extent) with the new AMD X3D cpu's using 2 chiplets, as only one will have the extra cache, and SC loves cache, but that's a topic for another thread/day.

Wolverine2349 · 19 Jan 2023 at 19:19

Gazb said:
Star Citizen really likes CPU resources and spawning threads, and on the hybrid chips it will put threads on the E cores and then you get stutters due to it having to wait on the slower cores. However people have tested and you don't have to disable the E cores, you should use Process Lasso and set Star Citizen to use the Physical P Cores.

There are other games out there that are also similarly affected, but as Star Citizen is so heavily CPU bound at the moment and the frame rates are lower, it's the easiest to notice the issue in.
I do wonder if we're gonna get a similar issue (but to a lesser extent) with the new AMD X3D cpu's using 2 chiplets, as only one will have the extra cache, and SC loves cache, but that's a topic for another thread/day.

Exactly well said. The e-cores stink for gaming. Games do not use lots of threads. Best disable them on especially on WIN10 for gaming as yikes if a game thread gets caught on an e-core.

WIN11 supposed to handle it better and in fact has a bug with thread director where all disabled could be a problem with HT on:

Core i7-12700K review revealing that E-cores hurt P-cores, but without them, everything is only worse

A review of the Core i7-12700K reveals that the presence of E-cores negatively impacts the performance of P-cores, but without them, the overall performance is even worse.

fox-laptop.com

No such issues with all e-cores disabled on 10 and for the better on 10 with them disabled.

mrk · 19 Jan 2023 at 20:03

The e cores were never designed for gaming, they are squarely for remedial apps/tasks whilst the p cores do their thing in gaming. This has been known since day 1 and Thread Director is the internal tool that handles all of that. If there is an issue with a game using e cores for the engine then that's a game patching problem, not an Intel problem. This was seen in a handful of games at launch of 12th gen but was patched within 2 months for all affected titles.

The e cores are super useful and here to stay as far as I can see and from personal experience too.

MartinPrince · 19 Jan 2023 at 20:49

Wolverine2349 said:
Exactly well said. The e-cores stink for gaming. Games do not use lots of threads. Best disable them on especially on WIN10 for gaming as yikes if a game thread gets caught on an e-core.

WIN11 supposed to handle it better and in fact has a bug with thread director where all disabled could be a problem with HT on:

Core i7-12700K review revealing that E-cores hurt P-cores, but without them, everything is only worse

A review of the Core i7-12700K reveals that the presence of E-cores negatively impacts the performance of P-cores, but without them, the overall performance is even worse.

fox-laptop.com

No such issues with all e-cores disabled on 10 and for the better on 10 with them disabled.

Reading through that article, the real point for me is that if you're gaming then you should disable HT by default.

HT is really only beneficial when ALL 'real' cores are permanently fully loaded. As this rarely applies when gaming on a modern 6+core CPU then leaving HT on will tend to be more of a hinderance then a benefit. This applies to Win10 and Win11.

Wolverine2349 · 19 Jan 2023 at 21:56

mrk said:
The e cores were never designed for gaming, they are squarely for remedial apps/tasks whilst the p cores do their thing in gaming. This has been known since day 1 and Thread Director is the internal tool that handles all of that. If there is an issue with a game using e cores for the engine then that's a game patching problem, not an Intel problem. This was seen in a handful of games at launch of 12th gen but was patched within 2 months for all affected titles.

The e cores are super useful and here to stay as far as I can see and from personal experience too.

Yeah which is why Intel should make a 6-8 P core only unlocked K chip with no e-cores and better binned P cores as e-cores do nothing at all for gaming. And/or add some extra L3 cache as games love that as well as P cores clock speed and charge same amount for 8 P core with extra cache chip as gamers pay for that extra L3 cache instead of e-cores or a 8 P core only chip with same amount of L3 cache as 13900K, but only 6-8 P cores for less money than the ones with e-cores added on.

Instead those of us that do not like e-cores nor have use for more than 8 cores have to pay extra then disable the e-cores to get the best P core Instructions per Clock and latency, but do not want to deal with the e-cores and hybrid gimmick crap.

eddyr · 19 Jan 2023 at 23:33

Wolverine2349 said:
Yeah which is why Intel should make a 6-8 P core only unlocked K chip with no e-cores and better binned P cores as e-cores do nothing at all for gaming. And/or add some extra L3 cache as games love that as well as P cores clock speed and charge same amount for 8 P core with extra cache chip as gamers pay for that extra L3 cache instead of e-cores or a 8 P core only chip with same amount of L3 cache as 13900K, but only 6-8 P cores for less money than the ones with e-cores added on.

Instead those of us that do not like e-cores nor have use for more than 8 cores have to pay extra then disable the e-cores to get the best P core Instructions per Clock and latency, but do not want to deal with the e-cores and hybrid gimmick crap.

Such an 8 P-core chip would mean designing and fab-ing a new die, and with limited market and volume you'd end up paying more for less.

If you meant just disable all e-cores (on existing dies) at the factory to sell as a cheaper model, why would they do that on functioning dies which they would otherwise sell with e-cores enabled for more (bare in mind they already have the various lower price points populated with lower spec/binned chips so there isn't an unserved lower price point spot in the market). The only incentive to go through the effort of an extra 'special' limited appeal P-core only model is if they can charge you more for it. Which begs the question why would anyone pay more for such a model when they could simply buy the e-core version and disable the cores themselves.

mrk · 19 Jan 2023 at 23:34

I still odn't get why some folks don't like them or disable them. if you're on Win11 then just leave them be, all works well and gaming performance is very strong anyway.

Wolverine2349 · 20 Jan 2023 at 00:32

eddyr said:
Such an 8 P-core chip would mean designing and fab-ing a new die, and with limited market and volume you'd end up paying more for less.

If you meant just disable all e-cores (on existing dies) at the factory to sell as a cheaper model, why would they do that on functioning dies which they would otherwise sell with e-cores enabled for more (bare in mind they already have the various lower price points populated with lower spec/binned chips so there isn't an unserved lower price point spot in the market). The only incentive to go through the effort of an extra 'special' limited appeal P-core only model is if they can charge you more for it. Which begs the question why would anyone pay more for such a model when they could simply buy the e-core version and disable the cores themselves.

Yes good point there, though how come AMD has an 8 P core only Ryzen 7700X and not just 7900X and 7950X if the fabs are cheaper. I mean the lower end AMD SKUs are defective higher core SKUs right??

I mean why doesn't Intel have defective e-core SKUs with 8 working P cores like AMD has defective P cores to have a count down to only 8 P cores.

oxf77 · 20 Jan 2023 at 02:45

Bencher said:
The same processes the P cores are running. What kind of question is that, lol

If they're running the same processes, then slower cores are going to do a worse job?

So they're obviously not intended to run the same processes.

16 E cores is pretty pointless. Anything low priority could be handled by 2-4 E cores.

oxf77 · 20 Jan 2023 at 02:47

mrk said:
I still odn't get why some folks don't like them or disable them. if you're on Win11 then just leave them be, all works well and gaming performance is very strong anyway.

Because we've been forced to pay for them.

mrk · 20 Jan 2023 at 02:49

You do realise there are models in the family without E cores right that are great for gaming? And AMD currently have a slew of standard core chips too. Nobody is forced into anything. I don't think you have fully understood what the architecture sets out to achieve.

Wolverine2349 · 20 Jan 2023 at 02:59

mrk said:
You do realise there are models in the family without E cores right that are great for gaming? And AMD currently have a slew of standard core chips too. Nobody is forced into anything. I don't think you have fully understood what the architecture sets out to achieve.

Gimped amounts of L3 cache and locked CPUs so no chance to overclock via multiplier.

mrk · 20 Jan 2023 at 03:02

Then just get the i7 or i9 and reconfigure it in the BIOS to how you want. Really the options are all there - Even if the efforts do seem illogical, you can still have it how you want. Hybrid cores are not going anywhere. Aside from benchmark score numbers, is overclocking really even useful in modern times when everything is GPU bound and the reliance on CPU bound resolutions in real world gaming is more and more a distant memory? All of these modern CPUs are so good at games anyway that primary focus really is on the GPU, not CPU.

All I am reading it seems are excuses to complain about without an actual real world scenario for those reasons applied. Do you think the 12700K (example) would be that much cheaper if it had no E cores? Nope, it would not be. Nvidia and others have proven that charging more for less is the norm regardless.

Wolverine2349 · 20 Jan 2023 at 03:03

oxf77 said:
Because we've been forced to pay for them.

Exactly and we want 8 strong cores well binned unlocked without using the e-cores and there is no Intel CPU on current arch available with 8 P cores and large L3 cache without the e-cores.

Intel would be wise to also offer a CPU for same price with 8 P cores only and lots more L3 cache for same price as 13900K. That would be the gamer's enthusiast chip,

Maybe Intel does it with Raptor Lake refresh as games do not benefit at all from anymore than 6-8 cores and will not anytime soon if ever given the difficulty of writing time sensitive apps like games to scale to as many threads as possible.