Intel's Panther Lake Chip is its biggest win in years

Summary

Note: This story has been updated with additional testing on the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H in the MSI Prestige 14 Flip.This isn't just another Intel chip launch. Far from it. For years, most updates to Intel's laptop chips have been nothing more than modest performance increases over the previous year. That's not the case with the long-awaited arrival of Panther Lake.It's a chip design announced almost five years ago as part of the company's ambitious rescue plan to get back on track. Intel’s CEO at the time (and mastermind of the grand plan), Pat Gelsinger, called the technology the “cornerstone of the company's turnaround strategy.” Now, I have laptops in front of me with these Panther Lake chips inside, officially known as Intel Core Ultra Series 3. Having tested it myself, I'm left extremely impressed. I'm not sure if the Series 3 will redeem Intel's recent foibles, but these chips certainly feel like a big win for a company that really needs one.Intel Takes On the M5To succeed with the Core Ultra Series 3, Intel at least needed to fulfill the promises it made when the chips were announced last year. Namely, battery life and efficiency equivalent to its predecessor (Lunar Lake) with improved performance. That alone has been a major hurdle for the kind of x86 processors Intel has always made. The company has also boldly claimed that its higher-powered silicon for gaming laptops will do the opposite: maintain the performance of last year's chips with added efficiency for better battery life. That is, yet again, another tall order.I tested the Core Ultra X9 388H new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 line of chips, both on the higher end of the spectrum: the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H in the MSI Prestige 14 Flip and the Core Ultra X9 388H in a 16-inch Lenovo IdeaPad reference unit. These are both 16-core CPUs, broken down into four performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and four low-power efficiency cores.Interestingly, this is actually two fewer performance cores than the...