(Image credit: Fritzchen Fritz) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

Become a Member in Seconds Unlock instant access to exclusive member features.

Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Join the club Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards.

.

Explore An account already exists for this email address, please log in.

Subscribe to our newsletter Rumours around Intel's next-gen Nova Lake CPUs have multiplied rapidly in recent days.

Highlights include an IPC performance advantage over AMD's upcoming Zen 6 chips, a core count upgrade for some models, and a massive APU variant to take on AMD's Strix Halo or its successor.First up, those IPC claims.

IPC refers to instructions per clock, and it's essentially a measure of how much work a CPU core does in each clock cycle.

.

It's not a measure of overall performance, because IPC combines with clock speed to determine actual performance.In other words, a processor's performance hinges on how much work a core does per clock cycle multiplied by the number of clock cycles per second.

Anyway, established tech leaker HXL on X recently posted the following superficially cryptic message: "IPC: CYC>Zen6.

Clock: Zen6>CYC".For reference, "CYC" here refers to Coyote Cove, which is the generation of Performance core used by Nova Lake CPUs ## Editor's Note The implications of this news could be significant for the industry. Source: [PC Gamer](https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/processors/intels-new-nova-lake-cpu-claimed-to-have-superior-ipc-performance-to-amds-next-gen-zen-6-as-rumour-mill-goes-into-overdrive-with-talk-of-higher-core-counts-and-an-apu-with-a-massive-igpu/)