Intel Nova Lake CPUs show promising single-thread performance in early benchmarks

Intel's upcoming Nova Lake desktop CPUs have appeared in early PassMark benchmarks, with results hinting at a potentially major improvement in performance per clock. A 28-core sample scored around 5,200 points in the single-thread test, beating several current Intel and AMD flagship desktop processors. However, these are pre-production samples, so the results should be treated with caution.

Several systems equipped with Nova Lake-S processors appeared in the PassMark PerformanceTest 11.1 database. The entries included 28-core samples with reported boost clocks of up to 4.8 GHz, as well as eight-core variants.

In the single-thread test, one 28-core Nova Lake sample scored 5,210 points, compared with 5,059 for the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, 4,805 for AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 4,635 for the Intel Core i9-14900KF. An eight-core Nova Lake sample with a reported boost clock of 4.8 GHz also narrowly outperformed the Core Ultra 9 285K.

Normalizing the scores by clock speed makes the results look more promising. Assuming the reported 4.8 GHz boost clock is accurate, the 28-core sample delivered approximately 1,085 PassMark points per GHz. That is around 15 % higher than the Core Ultra 9 285K and 29 % higher than the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. However, the comparison with AMD's processor uses its official maximum boost clock rather than its actual operating frequency, which PassMark did not report.

The multi-thread results are less impressive. The 28-core Nova Lake samples scored around 61,000 points, putting them slightly ahead of the Core i9-14900KF but well behind the Core Ultra 9 285K and Ryzen 9 9950X3D. The eight-core samples performed considerably worse than the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, despite having the same core count. Low operating clocks under multi-core loads or unfinished software tuning could help explain the results.

These benchmarks offer an early glimpse of Nova Lake's potential, not a reliable indication of final retail performance. Clock speeds vary between samples, and their configurations and software tuning may differ from those of finished processors.

Intel is expected to launch Nova Lake-S desktop CPUs in the first quarter of 2027, with the initial lineup reportedly including models with up to 28 cores. Some versions are also expected to feature substantially larger L3 caches, potentially positioning them to compete with AMD's X3D gaming processors.