After much anticipation, Intel has finally unveiled its "Panther Lake" Core Ultra Series 3 mobile processors, built on the 18A node. This new mobile platform aims to maximize performance across various areas, with a significant focus on integrated Arc graphics. The "Panther Lake" features a new Arc B390 GPU with 12 Xe cores, delivering up to 77% more performance compared to the previous generation "Lunar Lake" Arc 140V iGPU. Intel's performance claims are supported by comparisons to non-Intel graphics, such as the AMD Radeon 890M. In these comparisons, Intel's solution outperforms AMD's "Strix Point" iGPU by about 73% with upscaling technologies and is 82% faster at native resolution. For handheld devices relying on iGPU performance, Intel's "Panther Lake" appears to be the leader in gaming, at least for the time being.

Interestingly, Intel is also developing a separate handheld-focused "Panther Lake" SoC, likely featuring a new Arc B SKU, rumored to be named Arc B380. This version is expected to be more power-efficient, possibly through special binning of the dies, maintaining the full 12 Xe cores configuration at slightly reduced clock speeds to achieve similar performance with a much lower TDP. According to Intel, many handheld manufacturers, including Acer, MSI, and GDP, are showing interest in this SoC for their designs. However, we can also expect some full laptop SoCs to be used in handheld devices as well. Intel also claims that the new Arc B390 is comparable to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4050 laptop, which is a discrete chip.
Read full story

More...