New Intel CPU could beat AMD, as exec promises "leadership across the board"

Intel has just hinted that its next-generation Nova Lake CPUs could beat AMD into submission, with the company's corporate vice president of corporate planning and investor relations, John Pitzer, saying he expects Intel to have a "leadership position across the board on desktop," when Nova Lake is launched. Pitzer also confirmed that there's going to be an Arrow Lake refresh coming soon, but Intel is clearly confident that Nova Lake will be the game-changer for the company.

The latest Nova Lake rumors not only point to a 52-core Intel CPU being in the works, but also an Intel 3D V-cache equivalent, with CPUs potentially offering a huge amount of L3 cache that could see Intel directly taking on AMD's X3D CPUs. Come 2027, our best gaming CPU guide may look quite different - at the moment, we don't recommend any of the current Intel Arrow Lake CPUs we've tested.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia Technology Conference, Pitzer said that Intel's current "number one priority is to improve our product competitiveness." As we found in our Core Ultra 7 265K review, Intel has made big strides when it comes to power efficiency and thermals, but its current chips really struggle when it comes to games.

"We've seen some challenges at the high end of the desktop market," admitted Pitzer, while also stating that the company still provides the CPUs in seven out of every ten PCs shipped, compared with two for its nearest x86 competitor, which we assume means AMD.

Discussing how it would respond to the challenges presented by Intel's competition, Pitzer confirmed that "we're going to see a mid-cycle refresh of Arrow Lake coming up, which should help stem that a bit." He then added that, "as Nova Lake comes out at the end of next year into 2027, I think we're going to have a leadership position across the board on desktop."

Pitzer didn't mention gaming performance, but did admit that Intel had "some holes to fill around multi-threading. I think on the single-threaded performance, we feel really good about our position, but we've got some work to do over the next couple of years." Let's hope that gaming performance, which really stresses single-threaded performance, but can also make good use of several CPU cores, is a part of that equation. You won't get "leadership across the board" without decent gaming performance.

If you're thinking of upgrading your CPU right now, then check out our AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D review, as this is currently our favorite gaming chip. You can also read our best gaming motherboard guide, as well as our guide to buying the best CPU cooler, to make sure you get the most out of it.

Could Intel really bring the fight back to AMD? Let us know your thoughts in our community Discord server.