Intel Launches Core Ultra 3: 16-Core CPU, 12-Core GPU
On January 6, Intel officially unveiled its new Core processors codenamed "Panther Lake." This lineup marks Intel's first consumer-grade chips built on the cutting-edge Intel 18A process node, a major milestone in the company's effort to redefine performance leadership. Intel also announced that laptops powered by the Core Ultra 3 series are now available for pre-order, with a global launch scheduled for January 27.
As a key step in Intel's process technology evolution, Panther Lake introduces its Compute Tile built on Intel 18A, featuring the new RibbonFET gate-all-around (GAA) transistors and PowerVia backside power delivery. Compared to Intel 3, the 18A node allows a 3% higher frequency at the same power or a 25% power reduction at equivalent performance.
The Compute Tile can pack up to 16 cores, including 4 high-performance Cougar Cove cores (P-cores), 8 energy-efficient Darkmont cores (E-cores), and 4 ultra-low-power Darkmont cores (LP E-cores). Intel claims an overall performance increase of over 50% versus the previous generation. The Graphics Tile integrates up to 12 Xe3 cores on Intel 3 or TSMC N3E processes, also delivering a 50% boost in graphics performance. Additionally, the latest NPU5 core offers 50 TOPS AI computing power, slightly higher than Lunar Lake's 48 TOPS, and significantly surpassing the NPU3 and NPU3.5 in Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake SoCs.
Intel highlights that Panther Lake improves single-thread performance by over 10% under the same power limits, while multi-threaded performance rises more than 50% due to increased core counts. The SoC achieves a total AI performance of 180 TOPS—50 TOPS from the NPU, 10 TOPS from the CPU, and 120 TOPS from the GPU. Large language model performance nearly doubles, point-to-point video analysis efficiency improves 2.3 times, and visual-language-action model throughput grows 4.5 times, making it suitable for consumer AI PCs, gaming devices, and edge computing platforms.
Intel has also updated its naming scheme, launching the new X series (e.g., Ultra X9 and Ultra X7) and aligning integrated graphics names with the desktop Arc line. The flagship Core Ultra X9 388H features the Arc (Pro) B390 GPU with 12 Xe3 cores. Intel claims it delivers up to twice the speed of comparable AMD chips in selected games, averaging a 73% improvement.
At 25W, the Core Ultra X9 388H boosts gaming performance by up to 73% over the Core Ultra 9 285H. Image classification runs 1.7 times faster than NVIDIA Jetson Orin, large model latency is reduced by 90%, and video analysis energy efficiency is 2.3 times higher. The entire Core Ultra 3 series supports XeSS 3 with multi-frame generation, giving thin-and-light laptops an advantage in high-performance gaming.
The initial Panther Lake launch includes 14 SKUs:
· Core Ultra 9 series: Flagship Ultra X9 388H with 16 cores, 5.1 GHz, 18MB L3 cache, and support for up to 96GB LPDDR5x-9600 memory.
· Core Ultra 7 series: Six models, including Ultra X7 368H/358H with Arc B390 GPU; some optimized for lower power without "H" suffix, featuring 8-core configurations (4 P-cores + 0 E-cores + 4 LP E-cores).
· Core Ultra 5 series: Focused on efficiency; Ultra 5 338H includes Arc B370 GPU with 10 Xe3 cores.
For connectivity, Panther Lake offers up to 20 PCIe lanes (Gen5 and Gen4), full Wi-Fi 7 R2, and Bluetooth 6.0 support. Thunderbolt 5 is limited to select high-end models; some 8-core SKUs retain only four Thunderbolt 4 ports.
Intel emphasizes that Panther Lake combines Arrow Lake-H's high performance with Lunar Lake's ultra-efficiency on a single platform, calling it "Intel's most widely adopted AI PC platform to date." More than 200 designs from partners are expected, with pre-orders already open and global availability on January 27.
