Intel's next-gen laptop CPUs will feature massive upgrades with Nova Lake-HX packing as many as 28 cores in enthusiast configurations.
Intel Readies Nova Lake-HX CPUs For Enthusiast Laptops, Packing Up To 28 Cores
Details of Intel's next-gen enthusiast-grade laptop CPU platform have leaked out, and it looks like laptops are going to see a major bump in performance.
The new details come from Jaykihn, who has posted the core configurations of two SKUs that will be used to power the next-gen laptop family. Both SKUs are part of the Nova Lake-HX family, which is expected to launch by CES next year.
Starting with the top configuration, we are looking at 8 P-Cores, 16 E-Cores, and 4 LP-E cores. These are based on the Coyote Cove P-Core and Arctic Wolf E-Core architectures. This is a 28-core count config, so we are looking at a 16.6% bump in core count versus the existing 24-core HX SKUs. The same is true if we compare them with AMD's upcoming Zen 6 lineup, which is expected to feature up to 24 cores on similar desktop-class mobile chips.
- Nova Lake-HX SKU #1: 8P+16E+4LPE = 28 Cores
- Nova Lake-HX SKU #2: 4P+8E+4P = 16 Cores
The second SKU features 4 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores, and 4 LP-E cores, for a total of 16 cores, so that will also be a decent bump versus mainstream HX configs that we get to see today. Both configurations will feature 2 Xe3P iGPU cores, which is the same as the desktop variants. The major difference between the desktop & mobile SKUs is that the desktop lineup will scale up to 52 cores in dual compute tile models, and will also carry bLLC cache up to 288 MB.
Nova Lake CPU Configurations (Source: @Jaykihn)
| Die SKU | P-Cores (Coyote Cove) | E-Cores (Arctic Wolf) | LP-E Cores (Arctic Wolf) | Xe3 GPU Cores (Battlemage) | TDP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nova Lake-X | 16 | 32 | 4 | 2 | ~200W |
| Nova Lake-S | 8 | 16 | 4 | 2 | ~125W |
| Nova Lake-HX | 8 | 16 | 4 | 2 | ~55W |
| Nova Lake-HX | 4 | 8 | 4 | 2 | ~55W |
| Nova Lake-H | 4 | 8 | 4 | 12 | ~28W |
| Nova Lake-H | 4 | 8 | 4 | 4 | ~28W |
| Nova Lake-U | 4 | 0 | 4 | 4 | ~28W |
| Nova Lake-U | 2 | 0 | 4 | 2 | ~15W |
In addition to these, Jaykihn has also mentioned that it's not Nova Lake-AX but Razer Lake-AX that will be the competitor to AMD's Halo-class APUs. AMD currently has Strix Halo positioned as the upper echelon of its AI PC SoCs, with Gorgon Halo refresh expected this year. The company will release Medusa Halo sometime in 2027-2028. The launch of Razer Lake-AX might coincide with Intel's custom SoCs, which will fuse its x86 core architectures with NVIDIA's RTX GPUs.
Currently, we expect to see the Nova Lake-HX lineup at CES 2027 alongside NVIDIA's next-gen RTX 60 GPUs based on the Rubin architecture. The Razer Lake-AX lineup is still far away, with a launch expected by the end of 2027 or early 2028.
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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