The last few years of Intel’s desktop chips have not hit close to what PC owners have wanted. However, based on Intel execs’ latest fireside chats, the company could be ready to provide its best love letter to PC builders with its upcoming Nova Lake lineup . Gamers should especially pay attention.

If you need a refresher, Intel’s desktop chips slid in many gamers’ estimations as of late, especially with the launch of Arrow Lake, their expensive chips that improved overall CPU performance but didn’t offer any dramatic improvement for scenarios like gaming. And that’s not a small problem. PC gamers often drive the consumer market for desktop-level chips, and their ire set Intel back to the drawing board. In the meantime, AMD has utterly dominated this high-end desktop CPU space with chips like the Ryzen 7 9850X3D and the even more ludicrous Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition .

Intel’s next round of desktop processors may crib AMD’s 3D cache technology.…