These are some good points to consider. I think if we were to do a modified version of option 4, that would be a good solution. So "mixed core" CPUs would by default go under "xC mixed core" rankings but if you disable the little cores, you could still sub under the regular "xC" rankings.
Basically this:
- i9 12900K (8P + 8E) [this would be in the 16C Mixed Core ranking]
- i9 12900K (8P + 0E) [this would be in the 8C ranking, the user would have to manually disable the E-Cores in BIOS to participate]
This way you could still keep the old rankings alive but also have the "mixed cores" in their own ranking as well. You still kinda have the issue with weird core configs causing performance gaps but you would have that issue as well if you were to just group them by core count.