Leaked Intel Nova Lake-S 24-core CPU beats Core Ultra 9 285K in single-thread benchmarks

Leaked Nova Lake-S desktop CPU bench results show interesting new thresholds on single thread performance capabilities. By the looks of the early numbers, it seems Nova Lake-S might put some pressure on the top of the food chain at least where core speed matters more than cores. If you are after top single thread reaction speed in 2027 it may be worth keeping an eye on those benchmarks.

Early PassMark data shows strong single-thread gains but weaker multi-thread scores

These results are discovered in PassMark PerformanceTest 11.1, and show two particular test examples, 24 core flaghsip model, and 8 core embedded one. VideoCardz found these results by using the Manage Baselines feature that keeps the historical performance records for benchmarking.

• Single-thread PassMark Score (24-core): 5,210
• Multi-thread PassMark Score (24-core): 61,509
• Single-thread PassMark Score (8-core): 5,085
• Multi-thread PassMark Score (8-core): 23,478
• Core Count (Flagship Sample): 24

That 24 core Nova Lake-S sample scores 5210 points on single thread. That's about 3% better than Core Ultra 9 285K and 12% better than Core i9-14900KF. On multi thread performance that 24 core model reaches 61509 points. This is lower than Core Ultra 9 285K which scores 67274 points, and even Ryzen 9 9950X3D which scores 7205 points.

As for that 8 core sample, it also shows good single thread results. 5085 points, which is better than Core Ultra 9 285K baseline numbers of 5059 points. Intel's plan is to start with 28 core Nova Lake-S in the first quarter of 2027, so these 24 core and 8 core scores aren't necessarily for the most cores in that first round. Also there is some big scatter in 8 core test samples, it's either because of test conditions, or because of instability in development. It's not clear to us what the actual reasons are.

We've been following Intel Core Ultra 4000 closely. We already covered Intel Core Ultra 4000 name scheme.

What these bench results tell us clearly, is that Intel is going for some serious single thread performance boost with Nova Lake-S, but it will also be quite competitive for multi thread performance. Obviously the final list should have more cores than these test samples in the baselines.