1. A method of managing power consumption within a multi-core microprocessor, the method comprising: issuing an operating-system instruction to transition a recipient core to a target core state associated with one or more settings that would affect a performance or power-consuming characteristic of the microprocessor; implementing, by the recipient core, all settings associated with the target core state for the recipient core that would not affect resources shared with other cores; determining, by the recipient core, whether the target core state is associated with one or more settings that would affect at least one performance or power consuming characteristic of at least one resource shared with one or more other resource-sharing cores; in response to the determining operation, only when the target core state is associated with one or more settings that would affect at least one performance or power consuming characteristic of at least one resource shared with one or more other resource-sharing cores, determining, by the recipient core, a target multi-core state of the recipient and other resource-sharing cores, wherein the target multi-core state is only associated with 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 other resource-sharing core below the resource-sharing core's own target core state; and implementing, by the recipient core, the one or more settings associated with the target multi-core state.