Early Intel Panther Lake iGPU benchmark impresses with 50% faster performance vs Lunar Lake

[Redaktion]

The just-launched Intel Panther Lake flagship, the Core Ultra X9 388H, has been tested with 3DMark Time Spy Graphics to judge the performance of the onboard graphics. Panther Lake's next-gen Celestial iGPU with 12 Xe cores is reportedly up to 50% better than the Lunar Lake Arc 140V.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Early-Intel-Panther-Lake-iGPU-benchmark-impresses-with-50-faster-performance-vs-Lunar-Lake.1138923.0.html

[Terror Byte]

You people are easily impressed. It has 50% more cores, and is on a newer architecture in Xe3 so should be able to do a lot better IMO, which means either it's bandwidth starved or Xe3 is a weak sauce update.

[Hotz]

To be honest, it's not that bad if performance increases 1:1 according to the number of Xe-cores. It could be worse, for example on AMD iGPUs there is hardly any difference between 8 and 12 CUs. They only have like 15-20% improvement per 50% more cores.

That being said... the "improvement" on Panther Lake is still somehow a joke, because the news media mostly neglected the fact that it has 50% more Xe-cores.

Next thing is, that the Arc 140T iGPU (which is still Alchemist with Xe1 cores) already achieved 4348 points in TimeSpy Graphics Score, according to a recent ETA PRIME video (with timestamp) youtu.be/Z_-omwSu3Ek?si=F4eHHeco4lShc1s9&t=249

You could bet, that if you add +50% more Xe cores on Alchemist, it would also end up with a 6000 points Timespy score. Now it's clear why the Intel presentation also did not show any results with Panther Lake only having 8 Xe-cores. Because then everybody would have seen that there is almost no difference compared to Alchemist, and as such almost no difference between Xe3 and Xe1. The only good thing about this is, that if you still have a computer with "only" Xe1-cores, you don't have to feel "outdated", because the raw graphics performance is still similar.

[Calm Byte]

Doesn't matter either way.

It's not like this is going to have any real volume until 12 months later.

Tbf, RDNA in APUs has barely changed at all. Won't have any serious changes until 2027 either.

[Hotz]

Doesn't matter either way.

It's not like this is going to have any real volume until 12 months later.

True true... same old story since a couple of years: first the paper launches, then companies waiting for each and every computer show event to show off the new device (altogether taking up a good 6-8 months), and after that it still takes 3-4 months to arrive at the market in decent volumes, and the year is over. Tech releases have become a joke and tedious waiting game. I don't think it was that bad 10 years ago...

[Hotz]

I forgot to add: it's also because Panther Lake is an in-between-generation, which means it's not going to come to all platforms, and therefore they (Intel) don't care about about big volume production.

[yoyoba]

But what was the tdp to achieve 6k in timeSpy? I doubt it was 15W. For gaming handhelds, it really needs to stay <15W for good battery and temps...