Nova Lake-S CPUs may hold Intel’s answer to AMD’s 3D V-Cache

AMD has dominated CPU gaming performance benchmarks in recent years with its 3D V-Cache equipped models. We've been waiting for Intel's answer to this technology for quite some time and according to new reports, we will see it first in the next-generation Nova Lake-S desktop CPUs. 

Starting with the cache, Jaykihn (via VideoCardz) stated that only the upcoming unlocked/K-series CPUs will feature the bLLC integration. This feature, long-rumoured as Intel's direct answer to AMD's 3D V-Cache, is said to have a massive 144 MB size on select SKUs, finally providing a cache-first option to compete against AMD's gaming leadership. The cache is expected to reside on the compute tile itself.

Another significant upgrade in the upcoming desktop CPUs seems to be their AI performance. Nova Lake-S will completely skip the NPU generations used in Lunar Lake and Panther Lake, jumping from Arrow Lake-S’s NPU3 (13 TOPS) straight to NPU6, according to Jaykihn. This NPU6 block is rumoured to target 74 TOPS of raw performance, representing a massive 5.6x increase over its predecessor and easily eclipsing the 50 TOPS NPU target set for the Panther Lake mobile chips. This dramatic boost ensures the desktop platform is Copilot+ ready and future-proofed for local AI applications.

The leaker also mentioned that the integrated GPU usage in Nova Lake-S CPUs will ship with only 2 Xe3-LPG cores, a reduction from the four cores used in Arrow Lake-S. This concession is minimal, given that these desktop SKUs are intended to be paired with high-end discrete GPUs.

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KitGuru says: Do you think big amounts of cache are what Intel needs for its CPUs to be competitive in the desktop gaming space?

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