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Tom’s Guide

Technology

Alex Wawro

Intel unleashes 14 Panther Lake CPUs — here's what to expect from the new Core Ultra 3 chips

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Monday is always a big day for press conferences at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, and today was no exception. I know because we're on-site at CES 2026 in Las Vegas all week, and we just watched Intel's big keynote shortly after Nvidia's and not long before AMD is set to take the stage.

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You can check out our Nvidia CES 2026 keynote coverage for more on that event, which was entirely about AI and robotics. Intel, on the other hand, brought a big box of new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 laptop chips to show off.

Codenamed Panther Lake, these are the same Intel chips we were first introduced to back in October. Back then, we trouped down to Intel to check out the new chips firsthand and test them ourselves, admittedly under the watchful eye of company representatives.

So while we couldn't put these new chips through our full gauntlet of performance tests, we were able to verify that under controlled conditions, these new Core Ultra 3 CPUs are faster and more power-efficient than their predecessors, which should mean better gaming performance and battery life for the best Windows laptops packing these chips.

Since I can't share any independent testing results yet, let's dive into the most notable new features of these chips as well as the specs of the full lineup. Let's dig in!

Intel Core Ultra 3: Biggest upgrades at a glance

Our own Jason England holds up a slice of Panther Lake silicon from inside one of Intel's wafer fabrication facilities. (Image credit: Intel)

Core Architecture: Panther Lake is built on the new Intel 18A node and employs a "System of Chips" design featuring up to 16 cores and fabricated out of smaller "tiles," which can be moved and swapped to fine-tune performance and efficiency.
GPU Changes: The GPU built into these new Core Ultra 3 chips introduces a new, more efficient Xᵉ3 graphics architecture and scales up to 12 Xᵉ cores and 12 Ray Tracing Units, delivering better performance and featuring an increased 16 MB L2 Cache in the high-end configuration.
Multi-Thread Performance: Multi-thread performance is boosted by more than 50% versus Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake (a.k.a. Intel Core Ultra Series 200 and Series 100 chips) when operating at similar power levels.
Single-Thread Power Efficiency (vs. Arrow Lake): It delivers similar single-thread performance with more than 30% less power compared to Arrow Lake, to boot.
GPU performance: The new Xe3 architecture reportedly delivers up to 50% more GPU performance compared to Lunar Lake, and achieves 40% higher performance per watt compared to Arrow Lake H. Plus, new XeSS 3 tech introduces multi-frame generation for laptops with integrated graphics — a potential game-changer that could deliver seriously better framerates.

Intel Core Ultra Series 3 chips announced at CES 2026

Chip	Cores & Threads	P-core max boost	Intel smart cache	Xe cores	Graphics
Intel Core Ultra X9 388H	16	5.1 Ghz	18	12	Intel Arc B390/Pro B390
Intel Core Ultra 9 386H	16	4.9 Ghz	18	4	Intel graphics
Intel Core Ultra X7 368H	16	5.0 Ghz	18	12	Intel Arc B390/Pro B390
Intel Core Ultra 7 366H	16	4.8 Ghz	18	4	Intel graphics
Intel Core Ultra 7 365	8	4.8 Ghz	12	4	Intel graphics
Intel Core Ultra X7 358H	16	4.8 Ghz	18	4	Intel graphics
Intel Core Ultra 7 356H	16	4.8 Ghz	18	12	Intel Arc B390
Intel Core Ultra 7 355	8	4.7 Ghz	12	4	Intel graphics
Intel Core Ultra 5 338H	8	4.7 Ghz	18	10	Intel Arc B390/Pro B390
Intel Core Ultra 5 336H	12	4.6 Ghz	18	4	Intel graphics
Intel Core Ultra 5 335	12	4.6 Ghz	12	4	Intel graphics
Intel Core Ultra 5 325	8	4.5 Ghz	12	4	Intel graphics
Intel Core Ultra 5 332	8	4.4 Ghz	12	2	Intel graphics
Intel Core Ultra 5 322	8	4.4 Ghz	12	2	Intel graphics

Outlook

Since we already had a look at the new Panther Lake chips and knew they'd be launched at CES 2026, what I was really hoping to learn today is their specs and how much they'll cost.

So I got half of what I wanted, and for now, that's enough. I expect we'll start to see pre-order prices for laptops packing the new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 going live this week, and since the first laptops are slated to hit store shelves by January 27, we'll have a much clearer view of the pricing by the end of the month.

Given how volatile prices on laptops and components have been over the last year, I don't have high hopes that we'll see low prices on Panther Lake silicon. But I am hopeful that we're going to see some meaningfully better performance across a wide variety of Windows laptops, from dedicated gaming laptops sporting the Intel Core Ultra X9 and X7 chips to ultraportable business laptops that can achieve 20+ hours of battery life in our tests.

Of course, we'll have to wait until we can get a few new Panther Lake laptops into our testing lab — stay tuned!