Both Xeon 600 and Core Ultra Series 3 chips for business support Intel’s updated vPro platform, which includes a handful of new features. For starters, Intel is expanding what vPro covers with the vPro Certified Apps and Accessories Program. As the name suggests, Intel is working with ISVs and OEMs to validate applications and accessories for vPro use. On the application side, Intel says vPro certification means apps are “optimized for battery life and performance,” while for accessories, they’re “certified for seamless connectivity.”
Through early engagements with ISVs, Intel says it’s seen up to a 59% reduction in CPU utilization in FlexxAgent (an endpoint application for centralized IT management) with vPro optimizations, a 56% improvement in power efficiency in Riverbed Aternity (an employee management platform), and a 74% reduction in background activity in Absolute Secure Endpoint. Alongside these applications, Intel says it has partnerships with ESET, Citrix, and Crowdstrike, among others, along with Dell , HP, Jabra, Lenovo, and Logitech on the accessories front.
(Image credit: Intel) (Image credit: Intel) (Image credit: Intel) (Image credit: Intel) (Image credit: Intel) (Image credit: Intel) Also new is Intel Device IQ, which is enabled through Lakeside, Riverbed, Control Up, and Flexxible software. Intel says Device IQ “collects PC telemetry, [and] uniquely applies local AI to trigger remediation directly on the device.”
On the security front, Intel has added its Total Storage Encryption (TSE) feature to vPro, alongside Intel Threat Detection Technology. The latter can detect malware in real-time using AI, says Intel. On the NPU, Intel announced support for CrowdStrike Falcon Data Protection, using the onboard AI capabilities to protect sensitive data during agentic AI workloads (we’ve certainly seen those workloads go wrong in the past). Finally, Intel is extending the servicing window for Core Ultra Series 3 machines with vPro to 10 years.
Intel says it has over 125 designs for Panther Lake machines that support vPro, including the usual names like Acer, Asus, Dell, and HP, alongside more commercial-focused OEMs like Fujitsu, Panasonic Connect, and Dynabook. Designs start rolling out on March 31.
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Jake Roach is the Senior CPU Analyst at Tom\u2019s Hardware, writing reviews, news, and features about the latest consumer and workstation processors. ","contributorText":"With contributions from","contributors":[{"name":"Andrew E. Freedman","link":{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomshardware.com\/author\/andrew-e-freedman"}}],"collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-19/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } 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.
bit_user The article said: Keep in mind, however, that Geekbench is a pure benchmark; it isn’t a real-world workload. Eh, not really. @JakeRoach , what they did was to create a suite of benchmarks that characterize different classes of applications, a little bit like SPEC benchmarks. However, they used open source software to construct the different benchmarks, even if they're a lot more niche than what programs end users would typically use to accomplish these tasks. So, they do try to model various stressful applications, even if it's a bit of an approximation. In a few cases, like "Developer Workloads", the tools they use in the benchmarks are actually the same as what many people use. So, it's not simply an approximation in all cases. All of this is documented here: https://www.geekbench.com/doc/geekbench6-benchmark-internals.pdf The main beef I have with Geek Bench is really their Multithreaded scores. The issue there is they didn't limit themselves to apps that scale well. So, the MT score doesn't increase very much, as you go beyond a relatively small number of cores. Many people (myself included) find this behavior surprising. It also means that just knowing what the GB6 MT score is won't necessarily indicate how well an app like rendering or compiling runs. As far as I'm concerned, the GB6 MT score is pretty much worthless. Reply
JakeRoach @bit_user In this case, we're looking at Geekbench AI, which is a bit different: https://www.geekbench.com/doc/geekbench-ai-workloads.pdf Reply
bit_user Do any of these support overclocking? Also, I find it annoying that none of the quad-channel models are available in retail boxed form. The 638 is the model most interesting to me, personally. Not that I'm in the market for one, but that's probably what I'd want, if I were. Reply
JakeRoach bit_user said: Do any of these support overclocking? Yep! X-series SKUs support overclocking. Reply
JamesJones44 bit_user said: MT score is pretty much worthless. Sadly, I feel like this is true for headline scores of all generalized benchmarks (ST and MT, MT being worse). That's why I don't like the way GB and others give a generalized "overall" score. If an application is not written to take advantage of multiple threads or the general app design simply can't accommodate multiple threads (UI heavy applications for example) then the MT score of a CPU doesn't tell how application Y will benefit. Most RDBMSs for example love large CPU caches and high memory bandwidth, a GeekBench MT score might look great, but the CPU design has limit cache and low memory bandwidth which means the database a person is running might not improve performance wise much over a slower MT CPU with large cache/high memory bandwidth. Some show these types of stats in limited fashion, but are severely under represented IMO (I'm aware GB does test "cache misses" but this is just a single aspect of cache). While GB does test SQLite, SQLite is an embedded database with a limited query execution engine which is probably near the lowest end value wise database to use for general database benchmarking (don't get me wrong SQLite is a great DB, just don't expected to stress your system ever). My view is, generalized benchmarks are great for comparing silicon A to silicon B's "raw" performance, but are not great at giving insight into how a particular application/game/OS/etc. might perform with the given CPU. Reply
thestryker bit_user said: Do any of these support overclocking? Also, I find it annoying that none of the quad-channel models are available in retail boxed form. The 638 is the model most interesting to me, personally. Not that I'm in the market for one, but that's probably what I'd want, if I were. While the question has already been answered there's so much platform information that isn't really publicized by Intel here: https://skatterbencher.com/2026/03/25/skatterbencher-99-intel-xeon-678x-overclocked-to-5300-mhz/ The first one that made me pause is that the IMC ratios are fixed so RDIMMs run Gear 4 and MRDIMMs Gear 8. Reply
bit_user thestryker said: While the question has already been answered there's so much platform information that isn't really publicized by Intel here: https://skatterbencher.com/2026/03/25/skatterbencher-99-intel-xeon-678x-overclocked-to-5300-mhz/ Pretty nice overclockability, but much less upside than Sapphire Rapids. Reply
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-officially-releases-xeon-600-chips-announces-new-vpro-panther-lake-cpus-all-new-vpro-platform-goes-all-in-on-ai#main
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