Intel will reportedly take the fight to AMD's dominant X3D gaming CPUs with monstrous Nova Lake chip packing 288 MB of vertical cache and 52 cores

Intel is planning to sock it to AMD's dominant X3D CPUs with a 52-core version of its upcoming Nova Lake processor. Incredibly, it's claimed the chip will pack 288 MB of last-level vertical cache memory.

That's well over double the 128 MB of V-Cache currently offered by AMD's top X3D CPU, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D. This news comes somewhat cryptically from one of the most reliable leakers in the business, kopite7kimi (via WCCFTech).

It's a slightly convoluted data trail. But to cut a long story short, kopite7kimi responded to a story discussing 144 MB verticle cache allocations, which is expected to be known as bLLC or big last level cache in Intel parlance. For certain versions of Intel's upcoming Nova Lake CPUs, kopite7kimi clarified that there will be models with two compute tiles and thus double the stacked cache.

So, according to this information, the top Intel Nova Lake CPU will have two compute tiles, each with eight Performance and 16 Efficient cores, plus 144 MB of vertical cache or bLLC. That makes for a total of 48 cores and 288 MB of Intel's equivalent to AMD V-Cache. The chips will also have another four low-power Efficient cores located in the SoC tile, making for a grand total of 52 cores (that core count total has appeared in a shipping manifest, too).

The reports claim that there will also be a variant with eight Performance and 12 Efficient cores and bLLC cache, albeit the amount of the latter isn't clear. Finally, there will be models with a single compute tile in both of the core and bLLC configurations mentioned. Overall, then, that makes for four Nova Lake CPUs with the bLLC option.

If all this is accurate, it makes for one heck of a broadside on AMD's X3D chips and a serious attempt to regain the gaming performance crown. Indeed, these plans are so aggressive, kopite7kimi claims that they will create problems for motherboard makers.

"The power supply design of the new platform will be a challenge for motherboard manufacturers," kopite7kimi said on X.

Of course, AMD will not be standing still as all this happens. Intel has confirmed that Nova Lake is due out at the end of 2026. But AMD has likewise said it will release its own next-gen Zen 6 CPUs in 2026.

All of which means that next year is shaping up to be a battle royale of the stacked cache gaming CPUs. Let's just hope the memory supply crisis has died down by the time these monster gaming CPUs arrive.

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