Exorbitant Intel Nova Lake price and monstrous specs leak with 52 cores, 288 MB bLLC, and 15% IPC uplift for P-cores

[Redaktion]

Intel Nova Lake CPUs are scheduled to release sometime in late 2026. Intel is reportedly going all-out with up to 52 total cores and even 144 MB of extra last-level L3 cache. However, RedGamingTech has repored that there could be an even more monstrous Nova Lake SKU which doubles the 144 MB last-level cache.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Exorbitant-Intel-Nova-Lake-price-and-monstrous-specs-leak-with-52-cores-288-MB-bLLC-and-15-IPC-uplift-for-P-cores.1190609.0.html

[jayn2]

... so an article about an exorbitant price, without Intel announcing any price.  Seems a bit unfair.

[Gee]

These CPUs could be worthwhile if they had at least quad-channel memory. Unfortunately, the early leaks suggest that they still have dual channel. I didn't realize the importance of memory bandwidth until I switched from Skylake-X to Raptor Lake, and discovered that many programs actually run slower. I have now switched to M4 max (8 channels) and is satisfied, despite having only 16 cores.

[MoistOintment]

These CPUs could be worthwhile if they had at least quad-channel memory. Unfortunately, the early leaks suggest that they still have dual channel. I didn't realize the importance of memory bandwidth until I switched from Skylake-X to Raptor Lake, and discovered that many programs actually run slower. I have now switched to M4 max (8 channels) and is satisfied, despite having only 16 cores.

Large cache helps alleviate memory bandwidth bottlenecks to a certain extent.

The M4 Max has 8 memory channels specifically to provide enough bandwidth for the iGPU because it needs 512b on LPDDR5 to compensate for how much slower it is than GDDR7