A new Intel Nova Lake gaming CPU has just been spotted, and it has 28 cores

The core wars look set to kick off big time in the near future, as a new Intel Nova Lake gaming CPU with 28 cores has just been spotted in a shipping manifest. Nova Lake is the new architecture that's set to follow Arrow Lake in Intel's desktop CPU lineup, and the latter currently tops out at 24 cores in the Core Ultra 9 285K. However, it looks as though early Nova Lake samples are now already shipping, and with a large number of cores.

Whether or not these Intel Nova Lake CPUs will have the gaming performance necessary to conquer our best gaming CPU guide remains to be seen, but Intel certainly looks like it's loading its new chips with as many cores as possible. Only eight of these cores are expected to be full-fat P-Cores that are good for gaming, though, with 16 of them likely to be E-Cores designed for multi-threaded software, and perhaps four of them being low-power (LP) E-Cores.

The entries were first spotted by x86deadandback on X (formerly Twitter), but I've also checked them to take my own screenshot below. We've seen similar rumors about a chip with this configuration in mobile Nova Lake rumors, but this is the first time I've seen it mooted for a desktop CPU, and that's what's implied by this shipping manifest from India.

Several entries point to a "Nova Lake S" CPU, and Intel typically uses the S suffix to denote its desktop PC products. The entries also contain the text "28C" straight after "Nova Lake S," which is what suggests that these CPUs may indeed have 28 cores.

The chips are listed as being for research and development (R&D) purposes, and that they're "pre QS" - QS stands for qualification sample, which are early engineering samples of chips used for testing in the build-up to launch. The fact that these CPUs are listed as "pre QS" chips means that they're very early indeed, but this shipping information does appear to confirm that Nova Lake silicon is indeed already being produced in limited early quantities.

In addition to having loads of cores, there are also rumors that Intel is planning to stack its new CPUs with loads of cache in order to take on the likes of the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, with one leak even pointing to a top-end new Intel chip having a massive 288MB of L3 cache - 3x the amount in the 9800X3D.

These are all early leaks at the moment, though, and we won't know anything for sure until Intel eventually lifts the lid on the inner workings of Nova Lake itself. In the meantime, check out our guide to buying the best gaming motherboard if you're thinking about a CPU upgrade, as well as our best gaming RAM guide, as all the latest CPUs now require DDR5 memory too.

If you want to discuss all the latest news about CPUs with like-minded PC gamers and enthusiasts, make sure you join our community Discord channel.