I won’t rehash why Panther Lake is the most important chip Intel’s made in years, or what it brings to the table, save that these laptop processors, the first on its 18A process, are supposed to help Intel reclaim its position in the world. But I will tell you that they are finally arriving this month.
Today at CES, Intel said laptop preorders will begin tomorrow, January 6th, with the first laptops shipping on January 27th — and globally, Intel says that there will be over 200 third-generation Core Ultra 3 series systems to choose from. (That’s not the most ever, but it compares well with big past launches.)
They come with some new branding to help you tell the powerful ones from the somewhat weaker ones, but the branding isn’t quite good enough. Let’s dive in.
Intel’s new naming, explained
As you’ll see in Intel’s charts below, the new processors come with names like “Intel Core Ultra X9 388H” and “Intel Core Ultra 5 322.”
As it has since 2023, Intel Core Ultra is just branding that means “premium,” as opposed to more vanilla Intel Core processors that’ll arrive later.
Here’s the easy part: X-series chips, like the Core Ultra X9 and Core Ultra X7, have the most and best on board. All the X chips we’ve seen so far come with 16 CPU cores, plus Intel’s powerful new Arc B390 integrated graphics with 12 Xe3 graphics cores — three times as many as the non-X chips. They also have slightly higher maximum turbo speeds and maximum memory speeds than their equivalents; compare the Ultra X9 388H and the Ultra 9 386H on the chart below.
While the difference between X chips and non-X chips is pretty clear — it’s the GPU — there appears to be no clear-cut distinction between most of the rest of the Ultra 9 and Ultra 7 lineup. If you think an X9 388H sounds more powerful than an X7 368H, you’ll only be right by 100Hz worth of maximum turbo frequency, which really isn’t a lot! There are even some Ultra 5 chips with more CPU cores than the lowest-end Ultra 7 ones (12 cores versus 8), though most Ultra 7 and Ultra 9 currently have 16 cores.
So instead of looking at Ultra 7 or Ultra 9, look for the H to give you the most powerful chips, as I’ll explain below.
As for the rest of the decoder ring:
The first of their final three digits, the 3, tells you this is a third-gen Core Ultra chip (aka Panther Lake), not an older generation of product.
Image: Intel
The second of their final three digits seemingly tells us if they support Intel vPro and SIPP, but this depends on the tier. For Ultra 9 and Ultra 7, an 8 or 6 currently means they support them, while a 5 means they do not. For Ultra 5, a 3 means they support them, while a 2 means they do not.
The final digit doesn’t seem to have any particular meaning, save that smaller numbers are lower-end parts.
The H is the most important designation: H-series parts have up to double the CPU cores of non-H parts, more cache, and higher memory bandwidth, and they can have far more powerful Intel Arc integrated graphics than their counterparts. They can turbo up to 65W or even 80W of power instead of 55W. (All of these chips have a base power of 25W, which makes us wonder if Intel has lower-wattage 15W parts coming or how battery life might compare.) H-series chips also have more PCIe lanes and can support Thunderbolt 5.
Image: Intel
Finally, don’t confuse Intel’s Core Ultra 5 338H and 336H! They’re unusual in that one has a midrange integrated GPU with 10 Xe graphics cores, while the other has only vanilla integrated graphics and saves its extra PCIe lanes for other tasks. The latter might make for a good budget gaming laptop paired with a discrete GPU, since it’s got the vast majority of Intel’s CPU power behind it and PCIe lanes to spare. I wonder if the former will be a good gaming handheld chip, or if we’ll need all 12 Xe cores for that.
But we’ll have to wait and see as manufacturers announce their laptops starting this week. These chips will also go head-to-head with Qualcomm’s X2 Elite and Elite Extreme, and likely some new laptop chips from AMD.
