Since Nehalem Intel uses power gating that completely shuts down the cores etc, Sandy Bridge is even more aggressive than Nehalem and comes very quick down to Idle and C6. Whats the real advantage for EIST at least for Desktops since the Cores quickly go down to idle and C6? I found out that when i disabled EIST i noticed an immediately more responsive and snappy desktop experience with the essential power saving features, power gating and c6, still on, the CPU goes full speed and comes down to idle very quick saving more power in the process than using the intermediatery frequency scaling steps of EIST. Really, whats the advantage of enabling it? Its archaic and comes from the Pentium M era, its of no use anymore at least for me and my desktops.