I Tested Intel’s Flagship ‘Panther Lake’ Laptop Chip: The Graphics Are the Real Upgrade

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On January 26, 2026

Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 chips (code-named “Panther Lake”) were one of the stars of CES 2026, promising efficient processing and, most notably, markedly improved graphics performance. (Indeed, we tagged the Panther Lake family with one of our Best of CES awards.) You’ll start to see them in consumer systems on sale this week, and in advance of that launch, Intel sent me a retail Panther Lake laptop to put through our full suite of benchmark tests for the first time.

We first learned about these processors back in October, when PC Labs Director John Burek attended Intel’s Tech Tour in Arizona. There, Team Blue outlined the advantages of the 2nm-equivalent 18A process technology behind parts of the Core Ultra 3 architecture, and the potent Xe3-core-based integrated graphics. Next, John and I played games on and benchmarked Panther Lake laptops in limited sessions at CES 2026, which gave me strong inklings of what the platform might bring to PC gaming.

And now, finally, the first sample system for benchmarking arrived on our test benches. I put this laptop—the 2026 Asus Zenbook Duo, with Intel’s flagship Core Ultra X9 388H chip inside—through a host of productivity and gaming benchmark tests to see what the best of Intel’s Core Ultra 3 chips can do. While you’ll find plenty of caveats around the deployment of frame-boosting Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) technology and its related software, this deeper testing confirms my takeaways from the CES testing sessions: Panther Lake enables legitimate PC gaming experiences (and even outright fast frame rates) on laptops without a discrete GPU. Read on for a rundown of the chips, benchmarks, and results.

(Credit: Intel)

The (Complex) Panther Lake Rundown

In addition to the linked pieces above, this breakdown of the different individual chip models announced at CES 2026 contains all you need to understand Core Ultra 3 architecture. You’ll find many more details in those previously linked pieces, but I’ll highlight the essentials before getting into testing.

The star of the show with Panther Lake is the new Xe3 graphics architecture. The Core Ultra 3 approach is a single chip that contains a dedicated onboard graphics tile (with its Xe3 cores handling the graphics workload) and a separate CPU tile (containing various specialized processing cores). When I say Panther Lake “chip,” I’m referring to that one package with dedicated processor, graphics, and other tiles on board.

(Credit: Intel)

Since Intel planted its flag in improved integrated graphics performance, most pre-launch Panther Lake discussions have largely centered on these top-end chips with Arc integrated graphics processors (IGPs) containing these Xe3 cores. And indeed, the Asus laptop I received to benchmark, and its 388H CPU, employs the Arc B390. However, this does not apply to the whole chip stack: Only specific Panther Lake chips, the most potent ones, contain the Arc IGPs with denser clusters of these Xe3 cores than the others.

To reflect that, Panther Lake introduces a new naming wrinkle to the Intel lineup, with some chips designated “X7” or “X9.” The “X” denotes the presence of an Arc IGP, so you’ll see new models like the Core Ultra X9 388H and the Core Ultra 9 386H. Both are Panther Lake chips, but the Ultra X9 388H specifically has an Arc B390 IGP with 12 Xe3 graphics cores, while the Ultra 9 386H features only a four-core Intel Graphics IGP. (Intel Graphics IGPs still have Xe3 cores, just not nearly as many.)

This dynamic applies as you go down the performance tiers—you’ll find Ultra X7 and Ultra 7 chips, for example. You’ll find exceptions, too, such as a single (non-X) Core Ultra 5 chip with an Arc B370 IGP containing 10 Xe3 cores. This IGP is Intel’s only 10-core option, and the 12-core B390 didn’t make it into the Core Ultra 5 tier. All of this before even touching on the processor core, thread, and other differences? Refer to the chip chart to get a better handle on the new stack.

(Credit: Intel)

I’ve also seen some confusion about the use of “Arc” in reference to integrated graphics. For clarity, while the Arc brand can refer to a discrete GPU in some systems (such as Arc desktop graphics cards), here it’s referring to the denser Xe3 graphics tiles on the chip. This Arc IGP shares the “Battlemage” architecture of the latest Intel desktop GPUs, but it’s a form of integrated graphics because it’s on the same chip as the processor. This IGP is more potent than past integrated graphics options, but still distinct from a standalone GPU from, say, Nvidia.

(Credit: Intel)

Just one more caveat: Most of the chips in all tiers include the “H” suffix, such as the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H or the Core Ultra 7 356H. This naming is typical for Intel’s high-performance chips. However, this time around, a few models in the Ultra 5 and Ultra 7 tiers lack the H suffix entirely, with no “U” or “HX” suffix in its place. These have fewer processor cores than the H models.

Meet the Fiercest Panther: Testing the Core Ultra X9 388H

All of that stated, the processor I’ve tested is the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H, with 16 CPU cores, a peak clock speed of 5.1GHz, 18MB of L3 cache, and (of course) those 12-core Arc B390 graphics. Intel divides these 16 CPU cores between four high-performance P-cores, eight high-efficiency E-cores, and four low-power high-efficiency LPE-cores. You’ll no doubt see diminishing graphics performance as you go down the stack to Ultra 7- and Ultra 5-tier chips, but we’ll have to wait until later to analyze those processors.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

This X9 chip was the subject of our previous benchmarking at CES, and it’s back inside our test laptop, the Asus Zenbook Duo. The Duo is a twin-screen system, but for the purposes of Core Ultra 3 testing, I limited use to one display. You can turn off the “bottom” screen on this laptop by placing the removable keyboard on top of it, functionally turning it into a traditional laptop.

With its 16:10 aspect ratio, a single 14-inch screen has a 2,880 by 1,800 native resolution (1800p), meaning the “full HD equivalent” is 1,920 by 1,200 pixels (1200p) rather than 1,920 by 1,080 pixels (1080p). I stuck with the native aspect ratio for testing, so the results below are in 1800p and 1200p.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

I put the Zenbook Duo through our usual benchmarking suite, which comprises several processor tests, then synthetic 3D graphics benchmarks, and finally gaming tests. Note that the comparison systems for the real-game benchmarks will be different since we didn’t subject past non-gaming machines to our game benchmarks.

Here, I’ve stacked up the Panther Lake Core Ultra X9 388H against a representative mix of Intel Core Ultra 200 chips, plus AMD Ryzen AI 300 processors. These are mostly “9-tier” Core Ultra and Ryzen chips, plus one Core Ultra 7 processor, and mostly systems with 32GB of memory. The laptops housing these chips are equivalent 14-inch and 16-inch mainstream laptops.

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

Our primary overall benchmark, UL’s PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC’s storage throughput.

Three more tests we rely on here are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs’ Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution. Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Creators rates a PC’s image-editing prowess through a variety of automated operations in the seminal photo editor Adobe Photoshop 25.

While Panther Lake’s graphics performance is grabbing the headlines, as you can see it doesn’t drop the ball on processing performance, either. These are steady results, right up there with the rest of these fast chips, demonstrating proficiency in productivity and processing-intensive media tasks. AMD has even faster chips, such as the Ryzen AI Max and Ryzen AI 400 line, so sitting at the same level as these older options may not be as impressive as you’d like. Regardless, machines with Panther Lake chips—at least, the top-end Core Ultra X9—look to be reliable for workloads in content creation and for office power-user tasks, easily on the level of these competitors.

At the same time, you can see why it’s the graphics stole the show here. These processing results are solid, but for a new platform, not much separates them from existing equivalent options. Boosting productivity speeds wasn’t the focus of the Core Ultra Series 3, so it’s understandable, but this is generationally more like treading water than advancing the ball.

3DMark Synthetic Graphics Testing

We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark test suite. The first pair, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), uses the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The second two, Steel Nomad’s regular and Light subtests, assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last, we turn to 3DMark’s Solar Bay to measure ray tracing performance in a synthetic environment.

Panther Lake got more of a chance to flex its muscles on these tests. Note that only the last system we’re comparing it with, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i, has a dedicated graphics chip: the GeForce RTX 5050. This entry-level laptop GPU from Nvidia’s current generation will give you a workable idea of how the Arc B390 IGP stacks up against a basic discrete graphics chip. Real-world gaming tests against gaming laptops are in the next section, while this shows how the Arc B390 looks versus existing integrated graphics options.

As you can see, across the board, the Panther Lake chip excels compared with past integrated graphics options from both Intel and AMD. It even outperformed the RTX 5050 in the Lenovo Yoga machine, though I wouldn’t get too carried away there. That has more to do with the weaker implementation of the RTX 5050 in that particular Yoga machine. In other tests using RTX 5050 gaming laptops, Nvidia’s GPU still easily outmuscles Intel’s Arc B390 IGP in 3DMark.

Before drawing any concrete conclusions, let’s get into the actual gaming tests to paint a fuller picture.

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Real-World Game Testing

The results from these next benchmarks are the real bread and butter of our Panther Lake testing. The group of laptops we’re comparing against here are all proper gaming systems, with high-speed processors and discrete graphics chips.

Intel itself drew a comparison between the Arc B390 and the Nvidia RTX 4050, Nvidia’s last-generation entry-level GPU, so it’s included here alongside various GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs. Superior GPUs—particularly the RTX 5060 and RTX 5070—should outperform the Intel Panther Lake graphics handily, but you’ll see how close it came.

I put the laptop through our usual suite of gaming benchmarks: F1 2024, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and Cyberpunk 2077. We test all three at two resolutions: the full HD equivalent (1200p in this case, since it’s a 16:10 screen) and the native resolution of a given laptop if it’s higher—1800p for the Zenbook Duo. We record the average frame rate in all games.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

At both of these resolutions, we run each game at two different visual quality levels. F1 2024 operates at the maximum “ultra” settings in both runs, but the second run uses the relevant upscaling technology (XeSS for Panther Lake, or DLSS for Nvidia GeForce) turned on to see how much frame rates improve from the first run. For the Zenbook Duo, that means the XeSS 2.0 support built into the game, with the Frame Generation toggle active (more on this in a moment).

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is our typical competitive multiplayer title. We run it at both the low-demand “minimum” visual preset and the maximum (Extreme) preset, with neither XeSS nor DLSS. Last, we come to Cyberpunk 2077, which is our harshest stress-test title; we run it on the Ultra graphics preset and again at the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset without DLSS or FSR.

(Credit: EA)

An important note on F1 2024: It is included in our usual benchmark suite as a test of how much upscaling technology can boost frame rates, usually through Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR. But it takes on extra importance for these tests, thanks to Intel’s own upscaler, called XeSS, which will play a major role in getting the most out of Panther Lake chips. XeSS works like those competing technologies: It renders the game at a lower resolution to boost frame rates, and upscales the picture quality with machine learning to maintain the visual fidelity of the end product.

XeSS is not new for this launch—XeSS 3.0 is the most recent version of the technology, and it’s available in about 50 games, and XeSS 2.0 is available in many more. But it is vital to Panther Lake’s performance claims. Related to this upscaling tech is the “frame generation” feature, which also boosts the frame rate by inserting artificially generated frames between the rendered frames—just how the same feature works with Nvidia’s DLSS. XeSS 2.0 and frame generation are both active for the F1 run, and I’ll test XeSS 3 next.

You’ll find a lot of different aspects to unpack in these scores. Starting with F1, unaided performance was just barely playable at 34 frames per second (fps) at 1200p and only 15fps at 1800p. Those frame rates don’t measure up to the GeForce chips, but note that these tests are running at the highest graphics preset—not usually what you’d even hope to run with integrated graphics—and it hangs pretty close to the RTX 4050 system. Crucially, though, you can see the massive increase with XeSS active at both resolutions. With XeSS enabled, the frame rates leap to 111fps at 1200p and 72fps at 1800p. What that means: You can turn a barely 30fps or sub-30fps showing into a 60fps-plus experience with XeSS and frame generation active.

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Call of Duty results without XeSS were more positive, hitting 80fps on the full HD and low settings run, which is how many competitive players run these titles. The rest of the results were decent, as well; you’ll struggle at 1800p with high settings, but even this improved integrated graphics solution is not really intended for high-resolution gaming. Most of Intel’s claims, reasonably, revolve around full HD resolution.

As you’d expect, Cyberpunk’s Ultra and Ray Tracing Overdrive settings were a lot to ask of the Arc B390. Still, a playable 35fps on Ultra settings isn’t too shabby for integrated graphics.

To that end, I went a bit beyond these charts to see what Panther Lake can do. On Cyberpunk 2077’s High visual preset at 1200p, which includes XeSS on quality mode and no frame generation, the Duo managed a respectable 58fps. These scores may not blow away enthusiasts, but if you consider this could be someone’s everyday laptop without the need for an Nvidia GPU, it’s pretty commendable.

Additional XeSS Testing

I mentioned I’d return to additional XeSS testing; I would be remiss not to discuss it a little more in relation to Panther Lake. Intel talked up XeSS in a big way in the run-up to the Core Ultra 3’s launch, and for good reason. Even with leading Nvidia discrete GPUs, the most significant performance gains of late have come from technologies like these, rather than raw rendering horsepower.

(Credit: CD Projekt Red)

That’s especially true for Intel’s integrated graphics, which are destined to be deployed in thinner mainstream systems rather than thick gaming laptops. While some enthusiasts turn their nose up at upscaling, and particularly the “artificial” AI-created frames you get from turning on frame generation, the reality is that this is how high-frame-rate gaming will advance in 2026 and beyond. Most people do not own high-end, all-powerful gaming laptops, and even those need the help of Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s equivalent, FSR, at times.

As those with-and-without XeSS scores above demonstrated, the Zenbook Duo can go from barely playable frame rates up into the range of gaming laptops with XeSS active. And that wasn’t even the best-case scenario: Intel enabled an override feature in its graphics software that lets you hook into some games that don’t yet support it and force the latest version of XeSS 3.0 with frame generation on. Through the app, you can choose 2x, 3x, or 4x frame generation for increasingly faster frame rates.

(Credit: Intel/PCMag)

However, right now, I find that engaging the XeSS 3.0 override feature is pretty finicky; it fights against full-screen control, and it isn’t available in all titles. For instance, F1 2024 has native support for XeSS 2.0, but that game is listed as unsupported for the override feature, so you’re stuck with the in-game settings. More hard-core players will find more to tinker with, but the software and support ecosystem needs to improve before I would widely recommend this as the solution versus just using the in-game XeSS support, where available.

With that all out of the way, let’s get into the weeds with Cyberpunk 2077 and see what XeSS 3 can do at its best.

Even just activating XeSS 3.0 and 2x frame generation took the scores from 35fps to 96fps. Boosting frame generation to its maximum levels can introduce some visual artifacts and ghosting, so you may well prefer to leave it at this level. If you’re not bothered by these drawbacks and would rather crank up the frame rate, you can go up to the 3x and 4x levels to reach well above 100fps.

Plenty More Panther Lake to Come

The Asus Zenbook Duo is just the first of many, many Panther Lake laptops we expect to test this year. But in short, from what I see, the Core Ultra X9 388H flagship chip indeed succeeds in delivering superior integrated graphics performance—with some asterisks.

No, the 12-core Arc IGP wasn’t quite a GeForce RTX 4050 in terms of raw horsepower in the three games we ran. With traditional rendering, we saw just-playable frame rates in some titles and smooth play in others. The real gains require XeSS, where legitimately fast frame rates are possible with and without frame generation.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Now, most people won’t be up for tinkering around with the XeSS override software, but the existing and older in-game XeSS support should suffice for most folks. At its best, I saw this Panther Lake chip leap into high-frame-rate gaming territory. While the usual upscaling and artificial-frame caveats apply, it’s a big win for integrated graphics performance.

I should remind you that these tests represent the Core Ultra X9 388H, the top-end chip in Intel’s stack, and we don’t yet know the cost of the (likely more expensive) systems that will use it. The other Core Ultra 3 Series X7 and X9 chips with the Arc B390 will all contain this graphics advantage, but the non-“X” Core Ultra 3 chips with the lesser four-core graphics won’t meet this level of graphics performance.

I’m looking forward to testing more Panther Lake processors as the year unfolds and seeing whether this platform begins a new broadening of the PC gaming audience. Come back to PCMag soon for full reviews of the first Panther Lake laptops to come through PC Labs.