With its Arrow Lake generation, Intel tried something new, with mixed results. However, the real change should come with Nova Lake-S in 2026. In terms of performance, Intel mentions, in a leaked document, massive performance gains. Indeed, +10% in single threads and +60% in multi-threads are mentioned. These are significant figures, but they need to be verified.
Nova Lake-S: +10% performance in ST and up to 60% in MT!
If the above screenshot is anything to go by, the blues are out to regain leadership in gaming performance, while offering Ultimate CPUs in performance and efficiency. Well, that’s marketing stuffed with superlatives, but the performance is less so. On this subject, we’re expecting 10% more performance in single-threaded mode and 60% more in multi-threaded mode. While these percentages may seem significant, it’s important to remember that we’re talking about performance gains in single-threaded mode, not about an improvement in IPC. Here, higher frequencies can improve ST performance, for example. As for multi-threading, even if the percentage is significant, it ciould be dur to the amount of cores going up 2.16 times. So a x2 core count for a 60% performance improvement seems realistic to us. Yes, with this series, Intel could be offering processors equipped with an ever-increasing number of cores. We’re talking about a Core Ultra 9 with up to 16 Coyote Cove P-Cores and 32 Arctic Wolf E-Cores , not to mention four LPE Island cores. Even better for heavy gamers, we’re finally getting X3DCPUs in Intel sauce. We’re talking 8P/16E/4LPE and 8P/12E/4LPE cores with 180 and 144 MB L3 cache, more than any Ryzen X3D currently on the market. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. After all, these are just performance forecasts for the time being. Before launching Arrow Lake, we were also expecting big percentages, and the results were disappointing in gaming, to say the least. What’s more, AMD will also be celebrating in 2026 with Zen 6, which should offer more cores and improved performance.
