A new Intel gaming CPU with a whopping 52 cores has just been spotted

A new Intel gaming CPU with a massive 52 cores has just been hinted at in a shipping manifest, just a week after a 28-core model was seen elsewhere. That core count far outstrips anything we've seen from Intel's current Arrow Lake lineup, with its current Core Ultra 285K flagship capping out at just 24 cores.

A huge core count doesn't necessarily lead to epic gaming performance, however, and it's far too early to say whether or not these Intel Nova Lake CPUs will be contenders on our best gaming CPU guide. Nonetheless, the numbers here are striking. By our estimation, we'd expect this CPU to have a maximum of 16 Performance cores (P-Cores), which are the important ones for gaming, leaving 32 Efficiency cores (E-Cores) for multi-threaded work, with potentially four additional low-power (LP) E-cores left for background tasks. That's some serious multi-threaded processing power.

This new shipping manifest was shared in a report by Videocardz, but we've confirmed it ourselves here. The manifest details, dating back to June, show testing equipment for Intel LGA-1954 socket processors (listed as "1954LGA" in the manifest) with the tag "NVL-S," which is believed to refer to Nova Lake-S. The "S" suffix is something we've seen Intel use to denote its desktop CPU products to distinguish them from mobile CPUs in the past.

The manifest entries also refer to "28C & 52C." We've seen similar-style codes as recently as last week, with that 28-core Intel Nova Lake rumor showing a similar 28C reference in those shipping manifests. While we don't know for certain, this is likely a reference to CPU core counts, with 28C referring to a 28-core CPU and 52C referencing a 52-core processor.

Unlike that older rumor, this new manifest doesn't reveal the existence of an engineer sample, but it is a sign of intent that Intel is working on a 52-core processor for its new lineup. With Nova Lake sightings like this popping up with increasing regularity, it's likely that Intel is gearing up to launch these Nova Lake processors soon, potentially by the end of this year.

From a gaming perspective, we're hopeful that they're able to compete against AMD's dominant 3D V-cache chips, such as the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, as for the last few years AMD's X3D chips have consistently beaten Intel for gaming performance, thanks to their increased L3 cache. A previous Intel CPU cache rumor has pointed to an upcoming Intel CPU with a massive 288MB of L3 cache, hinting that Intel is readying itself to take on AMD's X3D chips directly. If that is the case, it could be a game-changer both for the gaming CPU market and for AMD and Intel's fortunes overall.

There's no indication that this 52-core CPU would incorporate this tech, though its possible we'll see CPUs that combine both a huge core count and a massive L3 cache in the future.

For more of a sense of where Intel's current CPU performance site, you can check out our Intel Core Ultra 7 265K review.

If you're planning a gaming rig upgrade, you can begin by checking out our best gaming motherboard guide for our top recommendations, with Intel and AMD-focused boards available.

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