Intel reportedly prepping supercharged Nova Lake-AX mobile chips for gaming — Team Blue’s high-performance APU to rival AMD’s Strix Halo

(Image credit: Intel)

A popular Intel leaker has confirmed to Tom’s Hardware that Intel is preparing a Nova Lake-based mobile chip designed to face off with AMD’s Strix Halo APU. Jaykihn posted on X a simple “Preliminary Nova Lake-AX”, with another hardware leak source, HXL, commenting “intel Halo” — indicating that this fabled silicon could be Team Blue’s answer to the mobile APU with a powerful integrated GPU that AMD claims can reportedly beat a discrete RTX 4070 laptop GPU in modern games.

PreliminaryNova Lake -AXJuly 16, 2025

This is the first time that Intel is using the AX suffix in its lineup; its current top-tier mobile gaming processor with a strong integrated GPU is the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX, which features four GPU cores. Intel’s Arrow Lake-HX chips only have six to eight P-cores and eight to 16 E-cores. You also get the same number of threads since the company ditched hyperthreading to improve power efficiency. Its TDP ranges from 55 watts to 160 watts, but the maximum you can achieve will still depend on the laptop manufacturer.

On the other hand, the most powerful Strix Halo chip — the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 — boasts 40 GPU compute units, enabling it to compete directly with discrete mobile graphics cards. Strix Halo APUs range from six to 16 cores, delivering 12 to 32 threads, and can be configured with up to 128 GB of soldered RAM. They have a minimum TDP of 45 watts but can go as high as 120 watts for the most powerful mobile workstations. The biggest disadvantage of the Strix Halo family is that it uses soldered RAM, whereas Arrow Lake-HS generally lets you expand your system RAM later.

If the Nova Lake-AX does make it to the market, you can expect its specifications and performance to at least match these chips. Unfortunately, we don’t have additional information about the processor. At the moment, all we know is that the Nova Lake architecture is slated for a 2026 launch. If Intel follows its usual release schedule, we expect its laptop variants, including the mysterious Nova Lake-AX, to arrive in early 2027. These upcoming chips are crucial for Intel, especially with the disappointing market response to its Arrow Lake CPUs. Hopefully, it will deliver a laptop processor that rivals entry-level (and maybe even mid-range) laptop graphics cards by then.

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Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

12 Comments Comment from the forums

TheSecondPower

The Strix Halo packaging is more similar to Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake packaging than other AMD lines. In Strix Halo AMD uses power-optimized bins of their desktop chiplets, and assuming Nova Lake is similar to Arrow Lake then Nova Lake-AX could do the same thing. It would need a SoC tile with a wider memory interface and a huge GPU tile and probably also a large GPU cache like Strix Halo has.

I kind of hope Intel goes another direction. What I wanted from Strix Halo was a mobile CPU that can game without a discrete GPU. (So 8 cores/16 threads and 40 CUs.) What we got was a 16-core CPU with 40 CUs. It's neat but too expensive for a simple portable gaming laptop.
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thestryker

TheSecondPower said:
I kind of hope Intel goes another direction. What I wanted from Strix Halo was a mobile CPU that can game without a discrete GPU. (So 8 cores/16 threads and 40 CUs.) What we got was a 16-core CPU with 40 CUs. It's neat but too expensive for a simple portable gaming laptop.
Unfortunately the way I see this is an easy way to tick the "AI" checkbox for shareholders. This is something Intel can do to address "AI" without developing new technology.

In theory PTL should be pretty good for gaming since it should have at least one SKU with 12 Xe3 cores. Though this is still going to be a situation relying on upscaling for higher graphics settings. Personally I just hope that it scales well at lower wattage for handheld as LNL is the best 15W performer now and it uses 8 Xe2 cores.
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Notton

Strix Halo has an 8C/16T, 32CU config, the Max 385.
They also have a really weird 6C/12T, 16CU config with the Max 380. Presumably, it's still better than the 370HX.

The next iteration Medusa Halo? is rumored to be 48CU and 384-bit mem bus.
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usertests

Should be easy enough for them to scale things up with chiplets and make something like Strix Halo or Apple M4 Max/etc. I also want to see them take on AMD's 3D V-Cache, both in desktop and in APUs.

TheSecondPower said:
I kind of hope Intel goes another direction. What I wanted from Strix Halo was a mobile CPU that can game without a discrete GPU. (So 8 cores/16 threads and 40 CUs.) What we got was a 16-core CPU with 40 CUs. It's neat but too expensive for a simple portable gaming laptop.
You can point to pretty much any AMD APU and complain about it having more than enough CPU performance, but not enough GPU performance. Renoir, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Phoenix, Strix Point were all designed with an expectation that it can be paired with dGPUs, but even the Halo hits 4060 mobile performance while giving you 16 CPU cores. Though the 8-core, 32 CU model should be getting most of the GPU performance (>80%?) while slashing the cores in half.

Maybe the only product you can point to that bucks the trend is the custom APU in the Steam Deck, quad-core Zen 2 with 8 CUs RDNA2. So it will be very interesting to see what chip makes it into the Steam Deck 2.

thestryker said:
In theory PTL should be pretty good for gaming since it should have at least one SKU with 12 Xe3 cores. Though this is still going to be a situation relying on upscaling for higher graphics settings. Personally I just hope that it scales well at lower wattage for handheld as LNL is the best 15W performer now and it uses 8 Xe2 cores.
Hopefully the new 18A node is enough to keep it on par with Lunar Lake power efficiency, even as it drops on-package memory and uses larger dies with more cores.

Notton said:
They also have a really weird 6C/12T, 16CU config with the Max 380. Presumably, it's still better than the 370HX.
It has to be a nothingburger SKU that some OEM asked for. There's no good reason to disable 40 CUs down to 16 CUs, which is what must be happening with that. But if someone pays for it, AMD would make it, and it takes care of the most garbage yields.

Notton said:
The next iteration Medusa Halo? is rumored to be 48CU and 384-bit mem bus.
LPDDR6 was just announced. I think it boosts bits per channel in a way that makes that 384-bit bus reachable with the same number of chips.
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TheSecondPower

thestryker said:
Unfortunately the way I see this is an easy way to tick the "AI" checkbox for shareholders. This is something Intel can do to address "AI" without developing new technology.

In theory PTL should be pretty good for gaming since it should have at least one SKU with 12 Xe3 cores. Though this is still going to be a situation relying on upscaling for higher graphics settings. Personally I just hope that it scales well at lower wattage for handheld as LNL is the best 15W performer now and it uses 8 Xe2 cores.
Strix Halo does seem to be a hit for running LLMs and is selling for a great deal of money so Intel may be smart to copy that formula.

Phoenix, Meteor Lake, Strix Point, Lunar Lake, and Arrow Lake have mostly different iGPUs yet all come pretty close in performance. I'm not pleased with where they land, because for nearly any semi-modern game the settings have to be turned way down. They're all held back by the shared 128-bit CPU DDR/LPDDR RAM they use. Even the most modest dGPUs have dedicated 128-bit GDDR memory. An APU with 192-bit memory or Infinity Cache would be a lot more usable in games.
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Mr Majestyk

If reports of AMD sticking to RDNA3.5 for Medusa Halo, while Nova Lake will get Xe3 with some aspects of Xe4, then Intel could deliver a knockout blow. Already even Lunar Lake's Xe2 can compete with AMD 890M. A full fat Xe3-Xe4 iGPU using even DDR5X 10000MT/s in a system with 128GB on 256 bit bus and allowing 120W+ I think would cause AMD a lot of grief. Let alone what Niviudia has in store.
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thestryker

TheSecondPower said:
They're all held back by the shared 128-bit CPU DDR/LPDDR RAM they use.
I imagine LPDDR6 should be a thing by the time NVL launches so that ought to be around 50% more bandwidth which will help. Xe2 seems to do more with its bandwidth than RDNA 3/3.5 so that could mean better things for Xe3.

TheSecondPower said:
An APU with 192-bit memory or Infinity Cache would be a lot more usable in games.
I think for the big APUs this will continue to be the case. We'll see wider bus and dedicated cache for the GPU side. I don't really think we'll see either of these things outside of those.

In theory they could target the lower end gaming laptop segment, but that would require a different overall design because those rely on cheap CPUs with the cheap GPUs. Historically AMD and Intel have largely put the best IGP with higher end CPU so the price premium is quite high.

From a technical standpoint there is nothing of course stopping them from putting a wider bus and better GPU on a midrange part and selling accordingly.
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usertests

Mr Majestyk said:
If reports of AMD sticking to RDNA3.5 for Medusa Halo, while Nova Lake will get Xe3 with some aspects of Xe4, then Intel could deliver a knockout blow.
We already have a leaker sharing specs but doubting this thing will exist: https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-nova-lake-ax-specs-leak-28-cpu-cores-xe3p-gpu-with-384-eus-launch-uncertain
thestryker said:
I think for the big APUs this will continue to be the case. We'll see wider bus and dedicated cache for the GPU side. I don't really think we'll see either of these things outside of those.
I think 16-32 MiB of Infinity Cache has to come to the 128-bit APUs eventually. 16 MiB would match the 6500 XT and be optimized for 1080p, if that. Strix Halo gets 32 MiB.

MLID has been teasing the possibility of Infinity Cache in Medusa Point, but not committing to it.
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TheSecondPower

thestryker said:
I imagine LPDDR6 should be a thing by the time NVL launches so that ought to be around 50% more bandwidth which will help. Xe2 seems to do more with its bandwidth than RDNA 3/3.5 so that could mean better things for Xe3.

I think for the big APUs this will continue to be the case. We'll see wider bus and dedicated cache for the GPU side. I don't really think we'll see either of these things outside of those.

In theory they could target the lower end gaming laptop segment, but that would require a different overall design because those rely on cheap CPUs with the cheap GPUs. Historically AMD and Intel have largely put the best IGP with higher end CPU so the price premium is quite high.

From a technical standpoint there is nothing of course stopping them from putting a wider bus and better GPU on a midrange part and selling accordingly.
I doubt LPDDR6 will change the relative performance of iGPUs to dGPUs; as dGPUs continue to advance iGPUs need faster memory just to stay the same distance behind. Although I'm remembering now that Arrow Lake or Meteor Lake added more cache to its Xe cores and you said Xe2 does more with the same memory, so that's promising. (Although Xe2 is also paired with the fastest memory from its time.)

Lunar Lake is neat; it has a modest CPU but didn't cheap out on the GPU. That's what handhelds need. With several handhelds on the market now maybe there's actually pressure to build a small APU with a big GPU like the Steam Deck uses. But hopefully one with a bigger GPU.
Reply
thestryker

TheSecondPower said:
I doubt LPDDR6 will change the relative performance of iGPUs to dGPUs; as dGPUs continue to advance iGPUs need faster memory just to stay the same distance behind.
Currently (I doubt it will go higher, but you never know) the best 128-bit LPDDR5 can do is 153.6GB/s and I don't think anything in the PC space supports that. From the initial tool support we know 128-bit LPDDR6 can support up to 230.4GB/s (initially, but I don't know what the absolute cap is) which puts it into RX 6600 territory. If they could translate that bandwidth into close to equivalent performance that would be really good for an IGP on something which wasn't focused on having big graphics. I think the certainly do need to be standardizing some cache just for graphics though.

TheSecondPower said:
Lunar Lake is neat; it has a modest CPU but didn't cheap out on the GPU. That's what handhelds need.
Yeah it has allowed LNL to be the best at ~15W even when compared to Z2E. PTL is also going to have a 4p/0e/4lpe configuration, but the LPE are undoubtedly on the SoC tile. It seems likely that the only place the 12 Xe3 configuration will appear is 4p/8e/4lpe which I think is a missed opportunity. There is supposed to be a 4p/4e/4lpe with 10 Xe3 cores though so maybe this will be the handheld choice.
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