That would be incorrect - not sure why you are saying what you are, but a quick glance through the ASE 16 NFG would have pointed out some changes to ELC.
What is more likely is a 12.5-ish proc design causing excessive recompilation. However, at this stage, you are only offering your symptoms and conclusions - none of which gives us anything to go by.
Turning on minimal logging....which tempdbs' are by default - would have no impact on the number of temp tables NOR the number of transactions. Clearly this illustrates a difference in workload - not the same as you have assumed.
Do you have monProcedureCache, monProcedureCacheMemoryUsage, monProcessActivity, etc.??? If so, I would start checking monProcedureCache for increases in recompiles or high removals/inserts to correspond with the CPU spikes..... I would also look at monProcessActivity and see how it corresponds with CPU Spikes....and I would also look at monSpinlockActivity.
