for example, people are using default-installed linux mint (kernel 5.15) on alder lake (12th gen intel) processors without ever knowing that they need to switch to an HWE kernel in order to obtain good performance on those processors.
FYI, many performance issues on alder lake have been fixed on linux 5.16 ~ 5.18:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-thread-director-coming-to-linux-5-18
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-alder-lake-ubuntu-2204-lts-os-users-should-consider-a-kernel-update