Intel is reportedly cooking up a 28-core gaming laptop CPU with a powerful GPU

New details about future Intel gaming CPUs for gaming laptops have been leaked online. Intel Nova Lake mobile CPUs in several different configurations are shown in the leak, with the most powerful one reportedly set to include up to 28 cores.

Modern gaming doesn't really require a 24-core gaming CPU (yet), but many cores can be useful for heavily multi-threaded applications, such as video encoding and 3D rendering. We've also seen a recent Intel Nova Lake rumor suggest that one of these new chips is coming with a massive helping of extra L3 cache, meaning it could potentially compete with AMD's 3D V-cache, the tech that has helped its competitor dominate our best gaming CPU guide in recent years.

There's no indication of an large L3 cache in this latest rumor, but it does provide some interesting information about how this new lineup might turn out. Regular Intel leaker Jaykihn0 provided some of the details in a post on X (formerly Twitter), suggesting that five Nova Lake laptop CPU configurations could be in development.

This rumor adds further speculation that Intel's current hybrid configuration will continue into the next generation, with each CPU containing Performance (P) and Efficient (E) cores, with the P-cores aimed at high-performance tasks like gaming, while E-cores focus on multi-threaded work. Low Power Efficiency (LP-E) cores are also included, which are designed for background tasks.

It's likely that these five configurations will form part of the high-end HX, mid-tier H, and power-efficient U CPU categories used by Intel to distinguish between different Intel Core Ultra CPUs so far. The most powerful Nova Lake-HX configuration, named as such in this report by Tom's Hardware and others, will reportedly have up to eight P-cores for gaming, 16 E-cores for general productivity work, and four low-power LP-E Cores, giving it a total of 28 cores.

Another prolific tech leaker, HXL, also suggests in a comment on the same post that the final number refers to a quad-core Intel Arc Xe3 integrated GPU. That would also tally with recent rumors about Nova Lake GPU technology, which suggested that Xe3 iGPUs could be integrated into these processors.

Another configuration will also reportedly include a CPU with a total of 16 cores, including four P-cores, eight E-cores, and four LP-E cores, along with a 12-core Xe3 iGPU. Another 16-core CPU with the same core count, albeit with a smaller quad-core iGPU, is also mentioned.

Nova Lake-U, with the -U suffix used for ultra-low voltage CPUs in the past, is supposedly set to max out with an eight-core chip featuring four P-cores and four LP-E cores. The lowest spec configuration, which doesn't yet have a suffixed name, reportedly has only four CPU cores, consisting of two P-cores and two LP-E cores, along with a two-core iGPU.

Intel hasn't formally announced Nova Lake, and isn't likely to do so for some time, so take this all with a grain of salt for now. Right now, recent Intel laptop CPU rumors suggest that Intel is struggling with mass-producing its rumored Panther Lake lineup, which is expected to launch before Nova Lake.

Either way, we'll be waiting to see what Intel has been cooking up over the coming months and years for its next, next generation CPUs, on both laptops and gaming PCs.

There are still powerful options from which to choose if you can't wait until then to pick up a new rig. Check out our best gaming laptop guide to take your gaming on the road, with models from a number of top manufacturers.

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