Intel Nova Lake CPUs may rely on extra cache for gaming gains

Leaked information suggests that Intel’s upcoming Nova Lake CPU generation may offer minimal gaming performance improvements over the current Arrow Lake architecture unless specific models are utilized.

According to hardware insider kopite7kimi, the standard versions of Nova Lake are expected to perform similarly to Arrow Lake in gaming scenarios. The primary differentiator for the new generation is expected to be the inclusion of a large additional Last-Level Cache (bLLC). This approach mirrors AMD’s 3D V-Cache technology, which has been used to boost gaming performance in Ryzen processors.

Without this increased cache capacity, the performance gains for Nova Lake may be negligible. It remains unclear whether the comparison refers to the original Core Ultra 200 series or subsequent Arrow Lake refresh models.