Intel’s upcoming Core Ultra X9 388H is up to 8.7% faster for 1T perf than Ryzen AI Max+ 395 — Panther Lake gains significant ground on Strix Halo in early Geekb

Intel's upcoming Core Ultra X9 388H is up to 8.7% faster for 1T perf than Ryzen AI Max+ 395 — Panther Lake gains significant ground on Strix Halo in early Geekb

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News , or add us as a preferred source , to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Hassam Nasir Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

User of Computers wait for reviews. Geekbench isn't everything for performance. Reply

George³ Much less memory bandwidth but more bandwidth per performance core, because its are only 4 in this Intel, hmm, APU. Reply

bit_user The article fails to compare it to Fire Range, which is the actual top-line AMD laptop processor. Ryzen AI Max gets lots of attention, due to its wide memory bus and updated & enlarged IO Die, but it's actually slower than laptop CPUs like the Ryzen 9 9955HX and 9955HX3D. Reply

Gururu bit_user said: The article fails to compare it to Fire Range, which is the actual top-line AMD laptop processor. Ryzen AI Max gets lots of attention, due to its wide memory bus and updated & enlarged IO Die, but it's actually slower than laptop CPUs like the Ryzen 9 9955HX and 9955HX3D. I know it was an early score as this is, but the 9955HX3D scored 3165/19858 in Mar 2025. Reply

usertests bit_user said: The article fails to compare it to Fire Range, which is the actual top-line AMD laptop processor. Ryzen AI Max gets lots of attention, due to its wide memory bus and updated & enlarged IO Die, but it's actually slower than laptop CPUs like the Ryzen 9 9955HX and 9955HX3D. Seems Intel will get an efficiency win with Panther Lake, no matter what. They'll also win in integrated graphics with 10-12 Xe3 core models. All AMD can do is throw Zen 5 refreshes at it. They could also sell them cheaper, if possible. 9955HX = 5.4 GHz turbo. Ryzen AI Max 395+ = 5.1 GHz turbo. Maybe Zen 6 will be the generation of 6 GHz mobile parts. Reply

bit_user usertests said: Seems Intel will get an efficiency win with Panther Lake, no matter what. Quite likely, outside of things where AVX-512 can give Zen 5 an advantage. Zen 5 can't overcome that node disadvantage, but I am eager to see a comparison on some truly MT workload, like rendering. In something like that, even without AVX-512, Ryzen AI Max will still likely beat Panther Lake. While the GeekBench 6 MT composite score is basically useless, the sub scores are more interesting. There, the Panther Lake listing shows a Ray tracing score of 29748. In contrast, if I find a Ryzen AI Max 395+ entry with roughly the same ST & MT scores as cited in the article, it gets 31878. BTW, I wonder what's their methodology for choosing scores from the comparison systems, because there are definitely higher-scoring Ryzen AI Max 395+ entries. Does Geek Bench's site have some histogram feature for letting you pick a characteristic value, or is it just whatever the author happens to choose? Reply

timsSOFTWARE Local AI will be the next big thing, but it will require the right hardware. The Ryzen AI Max chips are a step in the right direction , but a true "AI PC" is going to have 256+GB of high bandwidth RAM, along with a shared compute type architecture. Along the lines of the Mac Studio, the DGX Station, etc. Obviously it will be a few years before such PCs are affordable for the average person – the DGX Station Blackwell is powerful enough, but too expensive – but the direction seems pretty clear. Reply

bit_user timsSOFTWARE said: a true "AI PC" is going to have 256+GB of high bandwidth RAM, along with a shared compute type architecture. LPDDR-class memory is the only practical way to do this, right now. 256 GB is probably the realistic upper limit. timsSOFTWARE said: Obviously it will be a few years before such PCs are affordable for the average person Maybe we need 3D DRAM, to make it truly affordable. At the very least, we need to see DDR5 pricing return to its long-term trend. Reply

ezst036 It would be nice to see a revitalized Intel. Reply

Key considerations

  • Investor positioning can change fast
  • Volatility remains possible near catalysts
  • Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows

Reference reading

More on this site

Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.

Leave a Comment