Question Is it possible to use only the efficiency cores ?

[Drago__]

I'm running an i5-13500H on a new Acer Swift Go 16 OLED

I've noticed that the performances cores are used more often than the efficiency cores when doing general web browsing and other tasks such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.
Just wondering if there is any way to make the efficiency cores used more often to increase battery life on this laptop as it's not the best (about 4 hours of screen on time)

Also something weird I've noticed is that the efficiency cores start to be used when the laptop is being charged and the some of the performance cores stop being used. Is this normal behavior?

https://prnt.sc/HJGhBsOg_wiX (on battery)

 

[Lafong]

Have you pawed through every nook and cranny in the BIOS, looking for a control that might disable performance cores?

Your BIOS might be quite restricted with minimal controls. Or not.

 

[Drago__]

Your BIOS might be quite restricted with minimal controls. Or not.

It indeed is, there's only the option to disable the efficiency cores

 

[TerryLaze]

In general you should not mess with what windows is doing, their scheduler is much faster and knows what it's doing, you can only make it worse because if an app gets a decent amount of workload it will probably use up more energy in total on the e-cores because they will need so much more time to finish, the scheduler would know and switch it to the p-cores for the while.

Just change the power plan to the lowest (power saver) , and/or change the max processor state under processor power management, in the advanced options of power plan.

If you want to launch something to specific cores you can use affinity and a shortcut to do so.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ity-with/4e83fd39-34a7-49fe-a54a-ee891c38b737

 

[Drago__]

In that case, do you think basic apps like PowerPoint and Word can run on efficiency cores only?

I'm not doing anything crazy on there, just some basic text editing and presentations.

 

[Lafong]

In that case, do you think basic apps like PowerPoint and Word can run on efficiency cores only?

I'm not doing anything crazy on there, just some basic text editing and presentations.

I'd certainly imagine efficiency cores would have enough power for that...if you have at least 4 of them.

I think I read that single E core was about the same strength as a single core out of an Intel 6600K.....an 8 year old CPU that has 4 cores. I have one and it certainly has no trouble with standard desktop/Office/browser stuff.

But I don't know if there is any plausible way to get P cores turned off on your machine.

 

[TerryLaze]

In that case, do you think basic apps like PowerPoint and Word can run on efficiency cores only?

I'm not doing anything crazy on there, just some basic text editing and presentations.

Of course they can run on e-cores, I'm just saying don't expect your battery life to get noticeably better by doing it, as you noticed yourself windows parks unused cores and does power management very well.