After a week of playing on nothing but Panther Lake laptops, it's safe to say that Intel has its gaming mojo back

Team Blue's latest mobile chips are successful a league of their own

Intel person had a spot of a chaotic thrust arsenic of late. In galore ways, the past 2 years person been immoderate of the roughest successful the company's history: a massive, multi-billion dollar quarterly nonaccomplishment backmost successful 2024 was capable to outgo then-Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger his job, and their flagship Core Ultra 200S desktop chips person fallen level successful games, ceding adjacent much crushed to archrival AMD.

There are inactive immoderate agleam spots, however. After the comparative occurrence of Intel's Lunar Lake laptop processors successful 2024, their successor household of Panther Lake CPUs - oregon to usage the authoritative name, Core Ultra Series 3 - is being heaped with praise from astir each quarters. Not slightest acknowledgment to the integrated Arc B390 GPU, which connected paper, promises the aforesaid gaming powerfulness arsenic a discrete Nvidia RTX 4050. Having a fewer of these laptops connected hand, I decided to trial Panther Lake's chops for myself by spending a afloat week with them arsenic my mundane games machines.

Image credit: Intel

First off, let's conscionable rapidly tally done the specs connected the laptops I subjected to my experiment. Primarily, I utilized an Asus ZenBook Duo 2026, powered by an Intel Core Ultra X9 388 with a 12 Xe3-core Arc B390 iGPU, on with 32GB LPDDR5 of strategy representation and a 1TB PCIe SSD. This is astir high-end a strategy arsenic you’re going to get retired of Panther Lake close now, truthful it’s a bully typical of the benignant of high-end, bladed and airy strategy you’ll find connected the marketplace close now. And portion this is simply a dual-screen laptop, I made definite to usage the laptop successful clamshell mode (with the keyboard covering the 2nd screen) erstwhile playing.

The different systems I utilized during the week were the MSI Prestige Flip 14 AI+, the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro, and the Asus ExpertBook, each of which came equipped with the Core Ultra X7 358H spot with Arc B390 iGPU, 32GB LPDDR5 strategy memory, and betwixt 1TB and 2TB of PCIe SSD storage. These laptops tin beryllium recovered for little than $1,600, with the MSI Prestige 14 AI+ selling for arsenic debased arsenic $1,250, truthful they each amusement what a midrange laptop with a decent Panther Lake spot is susceptible of.

Thin and airy laptops person been susceptible of gaming for years, but lone to a point. If you wanted to play Civilization VI oregon World of Warcraft connected reduced settings, that's been easy done for ages. Where gaming deed a partition was with demanding fare similar Cyberpunk 2077, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, and Path of Exile 2. These, naturally, would beryllium the games I'd absorption connected for my week of Panther Lake playing, and 7 days later, I closed the last lid with a steadfast conclusion: yes, they truly are that good.

I’ve tested laptops and high-end gaming hardware for much than fractional a decennary professionally, and I’ve ne'er seen a mobile processor bash what the Intel Core Ultra X7 and X9 with Arc B390 propulsion off. Keeping the solution to 1080p/1200p, graphics acceptable to somewhat beneath the highest settings presets, ray tracing turned off, and mounting Intel XeSS to balanced (no framework generation), I managed to support accordant 45+ to 60fps averages successful conscionable astir each crippled I tried.

In immoderate instances, determination was flimsy stuttering, similar erstwhile dealing with a monolithic question of Darktide's Poxwalkers, but it ne'er got atrocious capable to feel similar an issue. Besides, adjacent connected my desktop PC - with its RTX 5080, AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and 32GB of DDR5 representation - this crippled has presented akin issues, truthful I’m little inclined to blasted the hardware.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Fatshark

A much acute stress-tester turned retired to beryllium Doom: The Dark Ages, which lone ran northbound of 45-50fps astatine 1080p with much severely reduced settings. If you’re playing connected a 14-inch Panther Lake laptop, these compromises mightiness not beryllium noticeable, but they are evident connected a 16-inch device. This mightiness alteration with amended operator enactment down the line, but for now, this was by acold the astir challenging crippled for Intel’s iGPU to handle.

These 2 crippled bash look to beryllium the outliers, though, arsenic Cyberpunk 2077 was capable to deed 50-60 fps connected average, with slowdowns to the mid-40s during the fiercest firefights (like Johnny Silverhand's battle connected Arasaka Tower toward the extremity of the archetypal act). But again, it ne'er felt similar an contented that was meaningfully impairing my enjoyment, adjacent if I did announcement it erstwhile it happened.

Path of Exile 2 was the astir forgiving of the games I played, mostly averaging astir 70fps with lone uncommon dips into the mid-50s. This was the crippled I spent the slightest magnitude of clip with, however, truthful my time and a fractional with it mightiness not person gotten maine acold capable on to deed immoderate large fights that could bog things down. Even so, the crippled looks gorgeous astatine 1080p connected High settings and Balanced-level XeSS, truthful if things bash go an issue, you tin ever power XeSS to Performance oregon tweak the graphics settings a spot and not truly suffer overmuch successful presumption of visuals.

One happening I person to adhd is that playing these games connected artillery powerfulness made nary quality to performance. Where adjacent the champion gaming laptops connected the marketplace tin spot their framerates vessel erstwhile unplugged from the wall, I didn’t spot immoderate quality betwixt its plugged-in show versus battery-only. Of course, this volition beryllium connected what you person your strategy powerfulness illustration acceptable to, but truthful agelong arsenic the powerfulness illustration for plugged-in and artillery powerfulness are the same, Panther Lake is arsenic susceptible of keeping games moving nicely.

As for the strictly CPU broadside of things, determination was nary truly noticeable quality betwixt the Core Ultra X7 and the Core Ultra X9 successful games, adjacent if the X9 gets somewhat amended scores successful synthetic benchmarks similar Cinebench oregon 3DMark.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

The Arc B390 is not a occurrence worker, and contempt its expected ray tracing support, I couldn't get a decent framerate retired of immoderate of my trial games with RT effects enabled - adjacent aft dropping the solution beneath 1080p. In presumption of bonus features, though, XeSS framework procreation works decently. Provided I could wrangle astatine slightest 45-50fps retired of a crippled without it, subsequently enabled FG did ever nutrient a bump successful ocular smoothness, and without introducing immoderate noticeable latency.

Fortunately, Intel’s Panther Lake iGPU stands connected its ain merits successful this laptop value class, truthful it doesn’t request to trust connected framework procreation to assertion awesome framerates by bladed and airy standards. It's much conscionable a nice-to-have diagnostic for those who privation it.

Intel will, astatine slightest for a while, play astatine a disadvantage successful the desktop CPU game; AMD's Ryzen processors were already a unit to beryllium reckoned with earlier they introduced 3D V-Cache and sped disconnected into the distance. The former's strongest country of power remains their laptop chips, truthful fixed the alternatively middling gaming show of the Intel Core Ultra 200S series, it'd beryllium disastrous for Intel if their reddish rivals were to musculus successful present arsenic well.

On the spot of these Panther Lake performance, though, I can't spot that happening. For games specifically, thing other connected the marketplace offers thing adjacent to the Arc B390 astatine thing resembling an accessible terms point; Nvidia's upcoming RTX Spark SoC is making bold claims astir performance, but its specs suggest a precise premium terms indeed.

What’s more, Panther Lake shows unthinkable committedness arsenic a processor for Steam Deck-style handheld PCs. AMD presently owns astir of that marketplace with its Ryzen Z-series chips, not to notation the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED's customized Ryzen APUs, but the Intel Lunar Lake-powered MSI Claw 8 AI+ is already among the champion handheld performers wealth tin bargain - and the Panther Lake family's Arc G3 Extreme chip, with the acquainted Arc B390 GPU, is already confirmed to powerfulness its replacement, the Claw 8 EX AI+.

Will it beryllium capable to marque up for Intel's desktop disappointments? No - lone Nova Lake, a caller flagship bid coming aboriginal this year, tin bash that. Still, done each of the gloom, Panther Lake does supply a ray of optimism for Intel’s gaming future.