Jan 26, 2026
3 min read
We tested Intel's flagship Panther Lake chip, the Core Ultra X9 388H, and we're incredibly impressed with the Core Ultra Series 3's combination of gaming graphics and incredible battery life.
- Intel's Panther Lake Core Ultra X9 388H represents a big leap forward in integrated graphics, with performance said to be close to the peerless Nvidia GeForce 4050 through AI frame generation and XeSS 3 technology.
- The flagship chip has 16 cores and 12 Xe3 GPU cores, allowing you to play games at 60 fps while maintaining an excellent battery life of 27 hours in the test.
- This development shows that integrated graphics are finally meeting the performance of gaming standards, although the competition between AMD Ryzen AI 400 and Apple M5 Pro is still strong in the 2026 processor market.
Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 platform, Panther Lake, and its champion, Core Ultra X9 388H microprocessor, offer something special: powerful gaming-grade 3D performance with battery life almost unheard of in the notebook space.
Intel positioned the Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) as a chip with the computing power of the Arrow Lake platform, with low power consumption of the Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake).The chip manufacturer also estimates that Panther Lake's gaming performance is about the same as a laptop with an internal Nvidia GeForce 4050 laptop chip.As I will show you, it is a relatively fair statement.
Rather than just a set of tests, we'll lay out the "story" of Panther Lake and try to highlight its strengths and weaknesses as we go.Let's hope you buy.
Mark Hochman / Foundry
Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 chip currently stands alone
In October, Intel initially placed the Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) in one of three base configurations, combining the new "Cougar Cove" P core and the "Darkmont" E-core and Low Power E-core.At the top end was what Intel called a "16-core 12Xe" configuration at the time, with 4 P cores, 8 E cores, and 4 E LP cores, 12 Xe3 GPU cores, and 12 ray tracing units.When the time came for Intel to announce the Panther Lake line of chips, the configuration included its official name, Core Ultra X9 388H, with the "X9" prefix added to highlight the largest Xe3 configuration.
Intel later let reviewers benchmark the Core Ultra Series 3 chip during CES, but only using games.That was our first indication that Panther Lake might be something special.
Intel prevented testers from running processor-specific benchmarks, however, because the number of cores inside the Panther Lake chip (16) is fewer than the number of cores inside the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip (18), meaning Intel may lose to the Snapdragon on paper in multi-core processor-specific benchmarks.
The third contender will be the AMD Ryzen AI 400, an upgrade to the excellent Ryzen AI 300, which AMD debuted last year.The Ryzen AI 400 contains only 12 cores, but runs them at a maximum clock speed of 5.2 GHz - the fastest speed of all three chips.But laptops with Ryzen AI 400 or Snapdragon X2 Elite are not yet available.
Mark Hachman / Foundry
The CPU doesn't suck anymore.
The Interel Core Ultra Kelel 1 (Mateor Lake) and CEE Ultra 2 (Larra Lake) are very happy.Snapdragon to keep right on right.In addition - good, at least in older companies.
With Panther Lake, Intel regained its leading position in CPU computing.
Intel provided us with the Asus ZenBook Duo (UX8407A) with an Intel Core Ultra X9 388H chip inside as a launch laptop for the Panther Lake platform.It's a slightly different option;ZenBook Duo is a two-sided laptop with a 99 watt-hour sports battery, which dramatically increases battery life.
Intel also provided a prototype Lenovo laptop that we used as a reality check for estimated battery life and other benchmarks.I left the ZenBook Duo in "clamshell" mode and only used one of the 2K screens to render data to produce results I was confident compared to other platforms.I started using Cinebench 2024 and Geekbench synthetic CPU tests.
Mark Hachman / Casting
To make good on Intel's claim that Panther Lake offers the CPU performance of the mobile Arrow Lake chip: yes, it's true.Intel launched the Core 285H chip last year, and in our review of the Core 285H, I found that the Cinebench 2024 score was 1,012 (multi-threaded) and 128 (single-threaded), just a hair below Panther Lake's performance.On Geekbench (measured below), the older 285H produced a score of 16,755, which is still lower than Panther Lake's Core Ultra X9 388H.
But if you're a Windows fan like us, you might be disappointed by the Ultra X9 388H's basic performance.Speaking of the Apple M5 MacBook Pro review, our colleagues at Macworld reported that the MacBook M4 Pro reported a score of 1,010 in Cinebench 2024 and 14,763 in Geekbench 6. But the MacBook M5 Pro scored 1,126 in Cinebench 2024 and currently 18,013 in Geek Intel chip.at this time.
Mark Hachman / Livnica
Perhaps the upcoming HX version will be better?
Battery life is great!But so is the battery
Intel says the Core Ultra 3 laptop will have a battery life of up to 27 hours.This is true – but, as is often the case, it depends.The ZenBook Duo's two screens absorb more power than a single display.However, Asus has fitted a 99Wh battery inside.This is a sports battery, and is the maximum power allowed in an airplane according to FAA regulations.In this case, it's like building a self-driving car on a sedan.
So yeah, battery life was crazy: about 22 hours on the ZenBook Duo with one screen on, and 25 to 28 hours (1,704 minutes) on the Lenovo prototype laptop we used in our early tests at CES.These tests were done by streaming 4K video until the battery died.When asked to do a bit more work (simulating office work in the ProOffice benchmark), battery life on the ZenBook Duo dropped to "just" under 14 hours - still the best results we've seen so far.In our recent review of the range, we break down the battery life a little bit on the Asus ZenBook Duo.
Foundry / Mark Hachman
Again, Intel wants us to believe that the Core Ultra has the same performance as an "Arrow Lake" chip, with the power draw of the Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) chip.We can verify this by tracking the power consumption of the Lunar Lake and Panther Lake notebooks.While both benchmarks pass at idle, the Core Ultra 3 chip uses around 5 watts of power, but it can drop below one watt.Lunar Lake averages about 3 watts or less at idle.
Not Apple, though.Intel will use TSMC's N3 processor technology to build CPUs in February's Moon Lake chips, while Panther Lake will use the Intel 18A, and some chips will be split between the two companies.In this case, the old Intel light TDP chip is 17W, Panther Lake is 25W - more chip power means better performance and worse battery life, but bigger batteries and Intel architecture are better.
Here's a performance graph showing both brands at idle, then running the benchmark and then dropping to idle once more.This graph only measures the power going into the CPU, not the entire laptop.This performance can vary widely and is best left to the battery life comparisons found in our individual laptop reviews.However, the Panther Lake provides much more power and comparative performance, and this chart shows that if the Lunar Lake laptop and the Panther Lake laptop contained the same battery capacity, the older Lunar Lake laptop might win.
Mark Hachman / Foundry
Still, if Intel can convince laptop makers to add bigger batteries to Panther Lake laptops, watch out.Laptop Battery Life Numbers Can Explode!
Performance continues to deteriorate with battery life
One of the interesting things about China's Qualcomm Snapdragon is that they run at full power all the time.Intel Core Ultra chips are not, which makes power consumption lower, and extends battery life.
I run all of our benchmarks at wall power, battery power, and the maximum allowable pressure of Windows, just to see the difference in performance in different user scenarios.As you will see in the Cinebench 2024 benchmarks, the only performance related to the work of the OS does not change between the power of the wall and the power of the battery, which keeps Windows very responsive in both situations.
But look here: Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 chips seem to hold their performance on a battery better than Intel's Core Ultra Series 2 or Series 1. We used three real-world benchmarks to test it. First, here is Procyon Office, which performs various tasks in Microsoft Office / 365. The performance decreases about 20 percent of the battery.
Mark Hachman/Foundry
However, in our typical real-world Handbrake test, where the computer was asked to transcode the open source movie Tears of Steel, performance dropped by just three percent between wall and battery power.
Here you can see how our Panther Lake test laptop fared compared to the competition.This is a custom test that we use as part of our laptop reviews.I also tried downloading the Arm version of the app, but the Qualcomm chip performed poorly here.This usually works well.
Valimo / Mark Hachman
After we look at real-world benchmarks, we see that Intel's Core Ultra 300 / Panther Lake performs well in the PugetBench Photoshop test.The test uses the shipping version of Photoshop.Performance here only dropped three percent in my tests when I turned off the laptop.
Keep in mind that CPU-specific testing is one of Snapdragon's strengths. With the Snapdragon X2 Elite producing superior CPU performance (preliminary data crushes Panther Lake, while the Elite
Mark Hachman / Casting
Unfortunately, Puget Systems' PugetBench benchmark didn't reach the version of Adobe Premiere Pro (26.0) that Adobe makes available for download, so I couldn't test that claim.
Panther Lake GPU performance is incredible
Note that Intel's flagship Panther Lake chip is the Core Ultra X9 388H, which makes a difference.Core 9 is now Core X9, which means the GPU has 12 Xe3 cores.Basically, the "X" means you're getting the best graphics Intel has to offer.
What does this mean?For years, integrated graphics have been able to play games: old, 2D sprite-based games, and some old 3D games at lower settings.They ran away.And that's good.At Panther Lake, we're navigating the transition to integrated graphics that perform almost as well as game-grade discrete graphics - and when you add AI upscaling and frame generation to the mix, a new top-tier title is right up your alley.
Some players refer to these as "fake" frames, so it's a good idea to look at traditional, unaccelerated tests first.Here we use UL's 3DMark, specifically the Time Spy and Steel Nomad Lite benchmarks.
Mark Hachman / Valukoda
Great increase in game performance
This is one of the big news at CES 2026: Intel claims that Panther Lake offered the performance of a gaming laptop with a discrete Nvidia GeForce 4050 GPU, but in an integrated package.
It was an eye-opening moment for me.A year ago, I tested Intel's Core Ultra 1 (Meteor Lake) and Core Ultra 2 (Moon Lake) with a custom batch of games like Cyberpunk: 2077 at the low settings shown below.
Mark Hachman / Foundry
But these tests prompted me to "finish" Panther Lake on our gaming benchmarks, with settings now used by more traditionally powerful laptops.Even using our aggressive game settings, it still achieves a gamer framerate similar to Shadow of the Tomb Raider.(Jump down to find those results.) Yes, it's an old game from 2018. Still, Shadow was a high-end AAA title with integrated graphics and just pure, clean, farm-to-table frames.
Don't get too excited though.Metro: Exodus was released in 2019, but its 4A engine is not available for Panther Lake.On our test laptop, the game averaged 24 frames per second at 1080p at the highest settings - 35 frames per second with Windows performance settings cranked up to max.
AI frames make a big difference when supported
It seems very strange to test the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 chip using the revised indicators based on 1080p at low settings - this usually means that the PC game is time for a new device or card.But the Core Ultra Series 3 reached the limit of 60 fps, which showed a "playable" game even with simple rendering.Panther Lake GPU also includes two different ways to artificially increase the frame rate - 2x scaling or using a lower resolution frame, then increase the resolution to the desired level - and XeSS 3, which can integrate three additional inputs with the help of AI.The naysayers call it "fake movies", but Panther Lake lets purists and aggressive players get what they want.
Our laptop test comes with Intel Graphics Software, a custom Intel application that allows you to control various aspects of the display and graphics - including forcing XeSS frame generation or AI-generated frames that can feed up to four interpolated frames for each image rendered by the GPU.It's huge - or is it?
What I've found is that yes, turning on frame generation can make a big difference.Just turning on upscaling and XeSS 3 boosted the frame rate to a whopping 140 frames per second!Running the Windows power slider attached a few extra boxes.Both are included in the "Max" score at the top of the chart.
Mark Hackman / Foundation
However, the effects seem to vary depending on the image quality.Running Cyberpunk at our traditional 1080p Ultra settings, the frame rate jumped from 52 to 92. Pushing the Windows slider to maximum performance gave me a frame rate of 143 fps.
The difference is that Cyberpunk specifically supports XeSS modes.Metro: Exodus doesn't - and "forcing" XeSS to use Intel Software Graphics doesn't work.Today's games seem more relaxed on older hardware, and AI framerate support certainly makes these games playable on newer laptops.However, I wonder if the AAA level writer is like Metro Games.It will have: powerful enough that the Panther Laptops can't run them, but it's too old to support the next generation of tablets that would otherwise fill the gap.
I also tried some other games.Total War: Warhammer 3 crashed while running the "Combat" test, but the campaign map test played at 44 fps on high settings at 1080p.The 2014 Thief remake was able to hit 60 fps even when played at 1080p on the highest settings.None support XeSS or frame generation.Forza Horizon 6 produced 62fps at Ultra 1080p settings with frame generation enabled, but it was not explicitly supported.
Can Panther Lake compete with a 4050 laptop?
That was the most provocative claim Intel made about Panther Lake at CES, just before we got a chance to test the chip on a prototype Lenovo laptop.Using purely rendered frames, it falls a little short.If frame generation is on, it will continue.
Will a player be eliminated with a PCTP PC to run a grefex Rtx 5090 to complete the generation to FRAME?Perhaps it.I hope the most attractive, see the skyrowing ram, SSD and GPU primaries, to turn off the FrameAgain, Here's a ULLA ULRA x9 388h going to shadow of the Todow, without the Francy, carrying out older games, delivery computer.
Foundry / Mark Hechman
And here is the Core Ultra X9 388H with Cyberpunk 2077 with frame generation enabled.It sounds like a scene from a 1980s TV show, where Voltron finally uses his new sword or K.I.T.T.Goes into turbo mode.The episode would have been much simpler if both had happened from the beginning.
Basically, aside from some people's disdain for AI and "fake framing", AI framing is the "win" button here.
Fonderie / Mark Hachman
Another option is AMD Ryzen AI Max
AMD tried to work harder on the judges (ours) than Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti who complained about personal fouls halfway through the interview.The company claims that we should be comparing Intel's Panther Lake with AMD's Ryzen AI 400 chip as well as the Ryzen AI Max processor.
That's why we say send us one!We're happy to review the Ryzen AI 400 when the PC is available.As for Ryzen AI Max, well - we reviewed it on the (Framework) Desktop and also saw it on the HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptop.As our tests show, the Ryzen AI Max is better than the Core Ultra X9 388H, although we'll put it in a position where Intel HX processors will eventually compete rather than take over the desktop.
AI is less important than ever
But Ryzen AI MAX makes sense, so to speak.People want to use private Llms locally, RYZEN AI MAX (Strix Halms. Our review ASUS Zenbook Duo with ULTRA X9 388H and 32GB of RAM delivered 18GB of VRAM for games and AI applications. Dos includes an NPU that can provide 50 tops or 122 full 2 tops or 112 full tops.
Let's face it, AI has problems on PC.It surprised us a bit that the initial focus on NPU was worth it.What we do know is that graphics chips are the most powerful AI processors. UL has several benchmarks.I've ditched the abstract "Vision" benchmark in favor of the Procon Image Generation (AI Art) benchmark, but UL tests can usually run on NPUs or GPUs, with a few exceptions.
Basically, this test reflects the score that UL assigns to the process.In the real world, it shows that the ZenBook Duo with a Core Ultra 3 chip inside creates a 512x512 image once every 4.5 seconds using the GPU, while our test laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 2 chip inside creates the same image once every nine seconds.But the Ultra X9 388H's NPU performance suffers, and The AMD's Ryzen AI NPU also outperforms it.
Mark Hachman / producent
The same goes for UL's LLM benchmark.Initially, this test was one of the few that evaluated NPU, and it was useful.But when Procyon started adding GPU support, it makes you wonder why we are using NPU when there is a more powerful alternative.
Procyon's test loads and runs a series of models, then generates a series of prompts and scores.Some tests don't work on some processors (again) and work on a few other processors.Some tests run only on the NPU.This test is really the best in the comparison of three generations of Intel Core Ultra processors.
Again, the test doesn't do a good job of describing real-world results, in this case. A plug-in Core Ultra 3 system using LLama 3.1 (8 billion parameters) on the NPU generates about 20 tokens per second; this will be displayed on your screen at about four characters per second.token persecond - a reading speed that works for me.Token output for the same model using the GPU under Windows balanced settings is around 25 tokens persecond.Lama 2 (runs 13 billion parameters);Token output is between 13 to 15 tokens per second and can be a bit slow.
Foundry / Mark Hachman
I wanted to work with Intel's AI Playground, but the app closed while preparing the llamaCPP-GGUF backend, so I abandoned the project.
2026 will be an amazing year
I honestly thought the laptop processor crop of 2025 was the best ever - you could buy a laptop with processors made by AMD, Intel or Qualcomm and walk away happy.But 2026 looks like it could be even better.
However, remember that Intel was the first to release this new generation of chips.AMD will eventually respond with Ryzen AI 400 and Qualcomm's Snapdragon
