Most of the Core Ultra 5 lineup ditches the H suffix, opting for lower power draw and a drop down to eight cores. The most interesting chip here is the Core Ultra 5 338H. It doesn’t carry the X-series branding, but it comes with a branded iGPU (the Arc B370), along with 10 Xe3 cores. We don’t have any Core Ultra 3 SKUs yet , but those usually arrive six months to a year after the initial product stack.
There are some features that reach across the entire stack. Wi-Fi 7 R2 and Bluetooth Core 6.0 are standard, as is XeSS, including multi-frame generation and Intel’s Endurance Gaming Mode for maximizing battery life. All of the chips also use Intel’s NPU 5 for up to 50 TOPS on the NPU, along with IPU 7.5, enabling higher resolutions on internal webcams.
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Jake Roach Social Links Navigation Senior Analyst, CPUs Jake Roach is the Senior CPU Analyst at Tom’s Hardware, writing reviews, news, and features about the latest consumer and workstation processors.
thestryker If the claims made bear out in real world testing that would put PTL in the same performance area as Strix Halo at equal power points. Of course Strix Halo scales up significantly, but it's still extremely impressive if these claims reflect reality. Intel made this claim against LNL (set to same 25W PL1): Up to 77% better gaming performance vs. Lunar Lake with an Intel® Core™ Ultra X9 388H vs. Intel® Core™ Ultra 9 288V They also spoke of a handheld platform they've made with PTL, but didn't go into detail instead handing it off to "partners". PTL vs Strix Point is the only graph they showed: https://i.imgur.com/cEvRLmq.jpeg Platforms: Intel Core Ultra X9 388H (Panther Lake) PL1=45W; tested in Intel reference platform; Memory: 32GB LPDDR5 9600; Storage: Samsung 9100 Pro 4TB; Display Resolution: 2880×1800; OS: Windows 11 26200.7462 AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (Strix Point); tested in ASUS Vivobook S 15; Memory: 32GB LPDDR5 7500; Storage: Samsung 9100 Pro 1 TB; Display Resolution: 2880×1620; OS: Windows 11 26200.7462 Note: As measured by Geomean of average game performance across 45 game titles at 1080p High with 2x upscaling when supported on Panther Lake Reference Platform vs. AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 tested in ASUS Vivobook S 15. edit: I missed one Up to 10% better gaming performance with an Intel® Core™ Ultra X9 388H vs. Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 255H with NVIDIA RTX 4050 Intel Core Ultra X9 388H (Panther Lake) PL1=45W; tested in Intel reference platform; Memory: 32GB LPDDR5 9600; Storage: Samsung PM9A1 512GB; Display Resolution: 2880×1800; OS: Windows 11 26200.6725 Intel Core Ultra 7 255H (Arrow Lake); tested in Dell 14 Premium with Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050; Memory: 32GB LPDDR5 8400; Storage: Samsung 9100 Pro 1 TB; Display Resolution: 2k IPS; OS: Windows 11 26200.7171 Reply
watzupken The iGPU performance certainly sounds very impressive, and I like that this will be a tight slap to sloppy AMD for regurgitating the same RDNA 3.x for few generations now. The worst part is AMD themselves are not providing new upscaling technology to their RDNA 3.x. Anyway, I do think the comparison with Lunar Lake at 25W is still not a fair one. The onboard memory on Lunar Lake constitutes part of that power draw, but not the case for Panther Lake. Will be interesting to see independent review on PTL as it can be an interesting gaming machine without dedicated GPUs. The other question in my mind is also the price of the higher end PTL based laptops. Lunar Lake based laptops with 32GB tends to be quite costly. Reply
Pierce2623 If that i5 with 10 Xe cores is eventually available for like $600-$700, then that would actually be a decent deal. That’s actually a wider GPU than like a 2060m by shader count. Regardless, I don’t believe the top SKU can perform like a 4050 with 2560 shaders more bandwidth and a higher TDP. Reply
Notton I can't wait to see the X series in action. The advertised gaming performance is impressive despite the severe memory bandwidth limitations. On a secondary note. If Tom's does a review of the non-X series Intel mobile CPUs, I would very much like to see how they handle LSFG as a secondary GPU. Seeing as they'll most likely be paired to an RTX 5050, why not try out a way to boost FPS? Right now, for LSFG secondary GPU the Radeon 780M is king, while intel iGPU offerings trail behind quite substantially. Reply
TerryLaze thestryker said: Display Resolution: 2880×1800; Note: As measured by Geomean of average game performance across 45 game titles at 1080p High with 2x upscaling when supported on Panther Lake Reference Platform vs. AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 tested in ASUS Vivobook S 15. So it could just be a matter of better NPU/AI power and not necessarily better GPU power. Still a valid use case just maybe not the performance boost in the way people think it is. Reply
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-doubles-down-on-gaming-with-panther-lake-claims-76-percent-faster-gaming-performance-new-x-series-chips-deliver-up-to-12-xe3-cores#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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- NVIDIA RTX Accelerates 4K AI Video Generation on PC With LTX-2 and ComfyUI Upgrades
- MSI’s Prestige ultra-thin laptops and convertibles embrace Panther Lake – up to Core Ultra X9 with standard OLED panels
- Intel CES 2026 keynote live blog: Panther Lake debuts in Core Ultra Series 3 laptop CPUs, Arc B390 IGP announced
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