Intel Core Ultra 9 4950K Benchmark Leak Shows Massive Nova Lake Gains
In the post, there are basically two new pieces of information. The first is that Intel may be using four-digit model numbers for its Nova Lake CPUs. He drops the model name of "Core Ultra 9 4950K" as well as a CPU-Z screenshot that seems to potentially confirm the name. Interestingly, despite "Core Ultra 9" branding, this processor is said to have 28 cores, which LaurentsChoice describes as "8P&20E" but is probably more accurately described as 8P + 16E + 4LP based on earlier leaks.
Beyond the name, he also claims "single-thread score near 1000 / multi-thread score near 20000". He doesn't say what benchmark, but considering his tightly cropped CPU-Z screenshot, we can assume that it was the CPU-Z benchmark. If we head over to the database, we can see that nothing yet released has reached 1,000 points in the CPU-Z single-threaded test, with the highest score so far going to the Core i9-14900KS.
20,000 is likewise a world-beating score for processors under 32 threads; recall that Nova Lake does not have Hyper-Threading, so this 28-core processor has 28 threads. The highest core under 32 threads is the AMD EPYC 4585PX, which is a little odd because that CPU is very literally just a Ryzen 9 9950X3D under another name. In any case, that chip scores 17708 points, meaning that if this Nova Lake benchmark is accurate, it will leapfrog AMD even in its single-compute-tile variant, to say nothing of the rumored 52-core version.
The usual leaked benchmark disclaimers apply, of course, and LaurentsChoice didn't provide any corroboration of his claim, so we don't really know that there's any basis for this at all. Moreover, he didn't even give exact values, so we'd really caution against taking anything meaningful from these benchmarks at this time. On top of that, the CPU-Z benchmark isn't really meaningful for most use cases; it's a pure synthetic arithmetic benchmark that isn't representative of any real workload. Still, the idea of Intel's new CPU crushing everyone on release is pretty exciting.
Interestingly, and as spotted by Videocardz, Hong Kong-based enthusiast Gotou_3rd claims that the leaked naming schema is accurate, but also that qualification samples (QS) for the desktop Nova Lake processors have not even been sampled to partners yet. That means external validation is not really underway yet, and it makes Intel's continued stance that Nova Lake is coming late this year a little more doubtful.
The progression from engineering sample (ES) to QS to production isn't necessarily a perfectly linear process, but partners will need time to validate the silicon, qualify their products, and make sure everything's ready for launch in terms of firmware and hardware designs. This process normally takes months, and while we still have three and a half months left to go in this year, if what Gotou_3rd is claiming is true, Intel might be cutting it pretty close even with a CES 2027 launch.
Of course, none of that matters if there's no memory in the channel to build new machines with. Let's pray for an intervention of some kind on that front, because if something doesn't ease soon, there's not going to be much of a DIY market to release parts for in the first place.
