Intel's 28-Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC Leaks As Flagship Nova Lake CPU

There's been a lot of speculation over the last few months on the matter of what exactly Intel was going to name its Nova Lake processors. Most people seemed satisfied to expect "Core Ultra 400 Series", which would make sense in light of its latest laptop CPUs. Instead, apparently, Intel is going with the Core Ultra 4000 series, at least on desktop. We heard about the Core Ultra 9 4950K before, but a new list from leaker LC Tech Leaks seems to corroborate that with a list of SKUs including six more models.


The list leaked by Laurents Choice was covered up in JPEG artifacts and ordered in a confusing way; you can see the original list by clicking the image above. However, the image directly embedded above is a cleaned-up version that has the same data, simply re-ordered in a more intuitive way. Starting from the top of the list we have the most exciting SKU of the bunch: a supposed Intel Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC.

What is "BFC"? Well, probably "Big F-ing Cache", if we were to guess. Given the gaming-focused nature of AMD's big-cache CPUs, the much-beloved "X3D" processors, it only makes sense for Intel's competing parts with the "Big Last Level Cache" (BLLC) feature to reference the grand-daddy of the FPS genre, DOOM, and its legendary "Big F-ing Gun". That part will apparently come with 8 P-cores, 16 E-cores, and 4 LP-E cores, which matches the 28-core prediction that's been floating around for some time.


Notably, many processors in the list do not mention the 4 LP E-cores present in the BFC SKUs. That would contradict the specifications given earlier by Jaykihn, but the Intel-specific leaker specifically replied to the LC Tech Leaks tweet saying exactly that: "the non-DS (non-bLLC/BFC) processors featured here also have LPE-cores and vPro support ... it just wasn't listed here, nothing deeper to it."

For its part, that Core Ultra 9 4950K looks extremely similar to the Core Ultra 9 285K that tops the current Arrow Lake family, so it will make a good candidate for generational comparisons. Of course, it's the "BFC" chips that we're really interested in benchmarking. We're dying to know if Intel's finest competes not only with the Ryzen 7 9850X3D but also with whatever AMD's cooking up for its next-generation Olympic Ridge processors.