Leaked Intel Nova Lake list shows three BFC chips with up to 144MB of cache

[SerialScroller52]

A leaked spec table lists seven initial Nova Lake-S desktop processors from Intel, three of them carrying a BFC tag, Tom's Hardware reports. The site says BFC "seems to be Intel's branding for bLLC, or big last level cache", which would be Intel's answer to AMD's popular X3D chips. The BFC parts have up to 144MB of cache. Extra cache has proved hugely beneficial for gaming, which is why AMD's X3D processors have dominated gaming benchmarks for several years

The flagship in the leak is the Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC, with 24 cores made up of 8 performance cores, 16 efficiency cores and 4 low power efficiency cores, a 125W TDP and a 32 execution unit integrated GPU. There is also a Core Ultra 9 4900 BFC with 22 cores at 65W, and a Core Ultra 7 4870K BFC with 24 cores at 125W. The headline mentions up to 28 cores, which likely counts the low power cores separately, though the article does not say

The lineup moves to four digit model numbers, and there is no Core Ultra 5 BFC chip in the table. A rumoured 52 core Nova Lake chip is missing from this leak, and is expected later as a high end desktop part. Intel has not confirmed any of these specifications, so the table should be treated as a rumour until launch

Intel badly needs a win on the desktop. AMD has held the gaming crown with its X3D chips for several generations, and Intel's recent desktop launches have been received coolly by gamers. If BFC chips can match X3D in games while keeping Intel's strengths in multi threaded work, they could change the picture. But the price of all that cache, at a time when memory costs are soaring, will matter

Would a big cache Intel chip tempt you away from AMD's X3D processors? And is it time to upgrade, or wait for Nova Lake and AMD's next response?

Leaked Intel Nova Lake product list has threewww.tomshardware.com