The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell-on-earth yarn claiming that Intel’s rumoured 28-core Nova Lake desktop chip could hit 296W.
Chipzilla’s upcoming Nova Lake-S range looks like an aggressive desktop line, if the latest Weibo leak is on the money. Weibo tipster Golden Pig Upgrade claims an 8+16+4 Nova Lake-S processor will carry a 296W power limit. That would make it one of Chipzilla’s thirstier mainstream desktop chips.
The leaked layout points to eight Cove P-cores, 16 Arctic Wolf E-cores and four LP-E cores, giving the processor 28 CPU cores. Previous leaks said this would be a single-compute-tile Nova Lake-S part, paired with Chipzilla’s bLLC, or Big Last-Level Cache.
The awkward bit is the power figure. Earlier rumours put this 28-core bLLC model at a 125W TDP, while enthusiast parts were expected to reach 175W. The Weibo post appears to say PL1 equals PL2 at 296W, rather than describing the chip’s base-frequency rating. PL1 and TDP are different measurements, which is useful when the numbers start looking daft.
The current Core Ultra 9 285K carries a 250W PL2 rating, so 296W would be an 18.4 per cent jump. Buyers would at least get four extra cores and more cache for the extra heat. The 8+16+4 part is expected to carry 144 MB of bLLC, in addition to the cache already on the CPU cores. Chipzilla’s bLLC is meant to take a swing at AMD’s 3D V-Cache.
Some dual-tile Nova Lake-S chips have been rumoured to reach 474W at PL2, but this leak concerns a single-tile part. Cooling one of these beasts could be a right laugh if Chipzilla really has decided that performance is worth a bigger power bill.
