It’s no secret that Intel has been betting big on large memory caches for its desktop CPUs, taking a page out of the books of its red rival, AMD, and its 3D V-Cache technology. Recently, a new rumour suggests that the blue chipmaker may focus on spreading out those large caches into the midrange options of its upcoming desktop lineup.
The rumour comes by way of popular leakster Jaykihn, who says that Intel is working on two Core Ultra 5 400S processors, both based on the Nova Lake-S platform. Again, and if you’re clueless about the moniker, the Core Ultra 5 series has always been the midrange segment of Intel’s portfolio.
What is interesting here is the number of alleged cores that Intel is prepared to offer consumers. Specifically, Jaykihn says that each processor will offer six P-Cores (codenamed Coyote Cove), 12 E-Cores (codenamed Arctic Wolf), and four LP E-Cores. That is a total of 22 cores, and it lines up with another earlier rumour: Intel’s plan on releasing a 52-core top-tier CPU.
Adding on to that, the two Intel Core Ultra 5 Nova Lake CPUs are also expected to have a massive big Last Level Cache, or bLLC, slapped onto them: one with 108MB of bLLC, and the other with 144MB.
As mentioned at the start, this sounds a lot like AMD and its 3D V-Cache technology, where the company stacked its L3 memory cache on some of its processors, which we know as the “X3D” lineup. This started with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which performed brilliantly on gaming, but was kneecapped by the lack of manual overclocking. That issue was later overcome with the launch of its Ryzen 9000X3D Series, with all X3D CPUs being overclockable.
One possible reason why Intel is planning on releasing two midrange Core Ultra 5 Nova Lake SKUs, both with large counts and bLLC packages, is to give AMD a run for its money. We’ll speak plainly: the company’s desktop lineup hasn’t enjoyed the fanfare it once commanded for many years. Its most recent lineup, Arrow Lake, provided better performance-per-watt, but its performance overall was more or less the same as its 14th Gen predecessors.
Then came the Core Ultra 200S Plus lineup that we reviewed and proved to be well worth its asking price, more so with the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus.
Getting back on point, a launch date for Nova Lake is still in the grey, but industry chatter suggests that Intel could make the grand announcement for it during CES next year. Fingers cross, we’ll be hearing some news about it closer to the proverbial date.
(Source: Techspot, Jaykihn via X)
