Intel is seemingly targeting conservative improvements with its upcoming Nova Lake architecture, offering a lower-than-expected multi-core uplift. Powering next-gen Core Ultra processors, Nova Lake is nevertheless a promising design, marking an important change in the brand’s overall core layout.
According to a leaked slide shared by @G_melo_ding on X, Nova Lake CPUs are set to offer at least a 10% single-threaded and 60% multi-threaded boost in performance compared to current Arrow Lake chips. While the single-threaded uplift is acceptable, if not entirely groundbreaking, the multi-threaded one seems quite odd.
Nova Lake is rumoured to pack up to 52 cores spread between 16 performance cores, 32 efficient cores, and four low-power cores. In contrast, Arrow Lake tops at eight P-cores plus 16 E-cores on the flagship model. Considering there will be double the P and E cores, you’d expect Nova Lake to hover near 100% uplift in multi-threaded tasks. Adding the extra low-power cores to the mix should bring even more performance.
As it stands, there are too many unknowns to tell exactly why Intel’s supposed internal figures are on the low side. First of all, we don’t actually know if this is referring to Nova Lake’s upcoming flagship or a mobile chip, and multi-threaded scaling isn’t perfectly one for one. The rumoured 150W power envelope likely plays a factor, which may not be enough to feed all 52 cores without sacrificing all-core clock speeds. After all, Core Ultra 285K has a 125W base TDP, yet it requires a strong cooler to avoid thermal throttling. There’s no way to push more power without it beoming untenable.
That said, the most plausible reason could be the simplest. These performance expectations are based on gaming scenarios, which tend to favour single-core performance, especially on old titles. 32 P-cores may simply be too much for a game to properly handle, at least until developers get to better know these upcoming CPUs.
In any case, this slide could as well be outdated or false for all we know, as Intel has yet to officially unveil its Nova Lake CPUs. The only thing that seems sure in these early stages is the need for a new socket and motherboard on desktop. An acceptable tradeoff to get double the cores.
