The image, originally shared by X user @G\_melo\_ding, suggests Troubled Chipzilla is eyeing more than 10 per cent single-threaded gains and a 60 per cent jump in multi-threaded performance. These figures supposedly come from internal predictions, so don’t bet your motherboard on them just yet.

The Nova Lake-S chips bring two new core architectures to the table dubbed Coyote Cove P-Cores and Arctic Wolf E-Cores. What’s unclear is whether Intel is comparing these numbers against its current Arrow Lake-S or the older Raptor Lake-S line. Arrow Lake-S showed an eight per cent single-thread and 15 per cent multi-thread boost over Raptor Lake-S, so Nova Lake-S could be following that trajectory, albeit on steroids.

One of the standout changes is core count. The top-tier Nova Lake-S chip is rumoured to sport a 52-core configuration, made up of 16 P-Cores, 32 E-Cores, and an additional 4 low-power LP-E Cores. That’s more than double the core count of the current Core Ultra 9 285K, which tops out at 24 cores with no LP-E cores in sight.

TDPs are expected to hover around 150W for the top bin chip, keeping things thermally spicy. The cache situation is getting equally bloated. Intel is apparently prepping “big LLC” variants, with the Core Ultra 9 packing up to 180 MB of LLC, compared to AMD’s Ryzen 9 with its 128 MB 3D V-Cache. Even the Core Ultra 7 chips will reportedly hit 144 MB, outpacing Ryzen 7’s 96 MB.

Intel is branding the lineup as offering “ultimate performance and efficiency” with “leadership gaming performance”, marketing-speak that usually comes attached to bold promises and delayed launches. If it all pans out, Nova Lake-S could give AMD’s Zen 6 CPUs a real fight when it finally lands.

Nova Lake-S isn’t expected until 2026, on a new LGA 1954 socket. Before that, we’re likely to see a minor Arrow Lake-S refresh on the LGA 1851 socket, which isn’t expected to deliver much excitement due to architectural similarities with the existing chips.

Nova Lake-S is rumoured to fall under the Core Ultra 400 branding, following Panther Lake’s Core Ultra 300 lineup. Whether Troubled Chipzilla can deliver on these ambitious claims is another matter entirely, but at least they’re aiming high after years of playing catch-up.