The first set of Intel's Panther Lake benchmarks has surfaced online, revealing that the flagship model has achieved a significant performance improvement over Lunar Lake.
Intel's 12 Xe3 'Celestial' iGPU Comes With Massive Upgrades Over Lunar Lake & Arrow Lake-H, But Far Behind AMD's Flagship iGPU
The launch of the Panther Lake lineup was met with considerable optimism in the industry, primarily due to Team Blue's announcement of substantial performance improvements over Lunar Lake, as well as notable gains in power efficiency figures.
Now, based on benchmarks shared by LaptopReview, it is revealed that Intel's Core X9 388H, one of the flagship variants in the Panther Lake series, has managed to score up to 6,300 points at 3DMark TimeSpy, thanks to its bumped-up 12 Xe3 cores iGPU. This is almost a 45% to 50% bump from Lunar Lake's Arc 140V, which is a massive upgrade.
It's essential to note that these figures are preliminary and were obtained at a time when Arc drivers are still being refined for the 'Celestial' Xe3 architecture, so the actual results may vary. However, the above figures indeed verify Intel's internal testing of the top configuration of the PTL iGPU, as the firm claims a 50% increase in graphical performance relative to the Lunar Lake platform. Interesting, when stacked up against NVIDIA's mobile GPU counterpart, the Core Ultra X9 388H iGPU manages to come right on par with the RTX 3050 laptop variant.
Regarding what we know about the Core Ultra X9 388H, the SKU features a 4+8+4 core configuration, divided into P/E/LP-E models, along with 12 Xe3 iGPU cores onboard. This is one of the fastest PTL models available, so the graphics benchmarks we are seeing here represent the 'upper bound' for Intel's new mobile lineup.
This is a massive improvement over Lunar Lake, mainly because we have seen the Xe cores being doubled. However, when comparing the CPU with AMD's Strix Halo, particularly the Radeon 8060S iGPU, PTL is far behind. But that's to be expected since Panther Lake SoCs will be rated at 45W TDPs while the Strix Halo APUs are rated at 120W and can go up to 140W as per our review. Plus those SoCs are featured in designs with much more powerful cooling solutions while Panther Lake will be mostly aimed at slim form factors.
TimeSpy Graphics (Higher is Better)
Yet again, the benchmarks are expected to improve once Panther Lake approaches its official launch date. However, it seems that the lineup will feature decent all-around improvements relative to internal products like Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake-H. We expect more details to emerge soon, so please stay tuned. However, for a quick rundown on the existing information on Panther Lake, make sure to check our extensive roundup here.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
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