Intel Panther Lake Gaming Benchmarks Revealed With Tom “TAP” Petersen
In case you missed the memo, Intel has officially launched its Core Ultra Series 3 processors, codenamed Panther Lake. These chips are a significant step forward for the brand, with new architectures on every single major IP block: new P-cores, new E-cores, new Xe3 GPU cores, and a new NPU design. We've already written at length about that, though; today we're here to brag about getting to go hands on with a machine sporting the top-end Core Ultra X9 388H chip and its powerful Arc B390 graphics.
How powerful? Well, Intel let us run a few benchmarks on it so we could bring you data for you to judge for yourself. We selected some games from our test suite for which we had comparative data and put the machine through its paces briefly to see if the Arc B390 GPU holds up to Intel's lofty claims. Spoilers: it mostly does. Let's check out the benchmarks real fast:
We'll start off with the venerable F1 22, simply because we have the most data for it. In this test, we've limited our results to strictly integrated graphics. Panther Lake bests all comers handily—aside from the monstrous Ryzen AI Max chip, of course. That processor is both much larger and also much more expensive than the Core Ultra X9 388H, which has far and away the fastest integrated GPU among our "standard" chips.
We also have a few results kicking around for F1 24; Intel dominates here, too. Note that the ROG Xbox Ally X was tested in Xbox Full Screen Experience mode, yet even AMD's finest integrated GPU (aside from the AI Max, of course) doesn't hold a candle to Intel's new part. Seriously impressive performance here, with great frame-time consistency, too.
In Middle-earth: Shadow of War, we see the Arc B390 striking very close to a discrete GeForce RTX 3060 and not all that far behind a Radeon RX 6800S. Are those older parts? Yes. Are they still power-chomping discrete GPUs that many people are gaming on today? Absolutely. The Core Ultra X9 388H nearly doubles the performance of the ROG Xbox Ally X, which is truly wild to see.
Finally, in Shadow of the Tomb Raider on "Highest" settings, we see the new integrated Arc GPU strike even closer to discrete GPUs, very nearly matching the mobile RTX 3060 here. Keep in mind this is a single processor in a thin & light laptop with a 45W power limit shared between CPUs and GPUs, not a hulking gaming system with loud fans and a power adapter capable of delivering over 200 watts. Very impressive stuff from Intel.
Obviously, a final performance judgment will require more testing than just a few older games; indeed, these games likely haven't received the same optimization attention in the Arc drivers. If anything, this is a proof that you don't really need to put an asterisk on Arc Graphics anymore—Intel's a real contender, with first-class game compatibility and solid performance.
We got a chance to talk to Tom 'TAP' Petersen about Core Ultra Series 3 and specifically the Arc B390 GPU, since he's a graphics guy; we've known TAP since he was working at NVIDIA years back. It's over 16 minutes long and well worth the watch, because Tom knows what he's talking about, and he explains it with both infectious enthusiasm as well as an simple-enough language that it's easy to follow even as a gamer or enthusiast, without being neck deep in this stuff. Check it out, and don't forget to subscribe to HotHardware on YouTube!
