Update 3: Ryzen AI CPUs are still better. After more testing we've established that, up until now, we'd been talking nonsense, but we had to write something positive about Panther Lake, with some nice misleading headlines. We were in a hurry after all, Panther Lake was a "surprise" (it had only "just" been announced and delayed for ages), so we didn't have time to properly check what we were writing. Besides, the Ryzen chips had been on the market for a year and everyone had already tested them at very low voltages, but we forgot to do the same properly.
Summary:
- The smaller Core Ultra X7 358H at lower power limits is beaten by the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.
- The flagship Core Ultra X9 388H at 28W and above is beaten by the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395. At 20W the scores are 794 vs 717. lol
- The same iGPU in the flagship Core Ultra X9 388H at 35W and above is even beaten by itself when paired with the smaller 358H. The 358H with exactly the same iGPU is faster.
And for this "miracle" Intel used the best manufacturing process it had available, the much-hyped 18A with all the "amazing" improvements we've been nagged about for years (we're talking CPU here as the iGPU is produced by TSMC) versus the Ryzen that still uses an old 4nm process. Good luck next round as AMD has already started producing server Venice at 2nm, when desktop and mobile Zen 6 will also arrive.
Intel also forces manufacturers to use only RAM at 9600 MHz (more than 1000 MHz faster than Ryzen) for the fastest models as this 388H.
Manufacturers had to redesign laptops from scratch because, as usual, Intel keeps changing the platform.
Production costs for these Panther Lake CPUs are huge because yields are poor. For these reasons a laptop that uses them costs about $2,600, even more than one with the Ryzen 395+.
And this is the final result?
Oh, and the iGPU...it's awful. It loses by a "hair" to the 8060S...is "only" 40% slower. lol
Yes, but this Panther Lake flagship 388H can be somewhat competitive when used at 15...10...5...1W.
So you buy a flagship that costs over $2,500 and then always run it at only 15W? Or leave it idle for hours?
It's a laptop, you need it to turn on and be usable, not a desktop that can sit idle for hours. Don't you have a better, cheaper option if you only need something for browsing or light use?
For the iGPU it's even worse as at that power it will always be under 30 FPS, so games are unplayable. It's useless. MFG? No, please not again. I beg you, let's not start explaining why that isn't a solution. It has already been explained extensively why it solves nothing, so don't make us go through this stupidity again.
Seriously, rather than accepting these unusable FPS from B390, just take your smartphone or a large tablet to play some android games, it's faster and saves you over $2,500 for nothing.
Maybe, besides inserting updates here and there across the Panther Lake articles it would also be useful to modify also the headlines accordingly (not just this article but the others too), and perhaps update or remove the outdated comparative charts that are still present, for example in this one.
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