A method is provided for managing power consumption within a multi-core microprocessor. An operating system issues an operating system instruction to transition a recipient core to a targeted power and/or performance state that is one of many possible states into which a microprocessor can place a core. Each core of the microprocessor has its own target state, and different cores may have different target states. After receiving the instruction, the recipient core implements any settings associated with its target core state that wouldn't affect resources shared with other cores. The recipient core also initiates an inter-core discovery process to determine a target multi-core state of all the cores sharing the resource. The target multi-core state reflects one or more settings that match the settings of the recipient core's target core state as much as possible without lowering a performance of any resource-sharing core below that core's own target core state.