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 minor performance boosts over the past year. This is not the case with the long-awaited arrival Panther Lake.

It’s a chip design announced nearly five years ago as part of the company’s ambitious rescue plan to get back on track. Intel’s CEO at the time (and the mastermind behind the Grand Plan), Pete Gelsinger, called the technology “a cornerstone of the company’s transformation strategy.” Now, I have laptops in front of me with these Panther Lake chips, officially known as Intel Core Ultra Series 3. After experiencing it myself, I am very 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 took on the M5

To succeed with the Core Ultra Series 3, Intel needed to at least deliver on the promises it made when the chips were announced last year. Namely, the same battery life and performance as its predecessor (Lunar Lake) with better performance. Only such X86 processors have been a major obstacle to the likes of Intel. The company also boldly claims that its high-power silicon for gaming laptops will do the opposite: maintain the performance of last year’s chips with added performance for better battery life. So again, another tall order.

At the higher end of the spectrum, I tested the new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 line of chips, the Core Ultra X9 388H: in the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H MSI Prestige 14 Flip and the Core Ultra X9 388H in the 16-inch Lenovo Ideapad reference unit. These are both 16-core CPUs, broken down into four performance cores, eight performance cores, and four low-power performance cores.

Interestingly, these are actually two lower-performance cores than the Core Ultra 9 285h, although it’s unclear which Intel Core Ultra Series 2 chip is the successor to that chip. For example, the 2025 MSI Prestige 14 Flip used a Core Ultra 7 258V Lunar Lake instead of an H-series Aero Lake chip. In other words, there is no fair comparison here in terms of price and performance. Here is a sample of the scores posted in my testing.

The aforementioned base Ultra 7 258V was tested in the Dell 14 Plus, a similar laptop to the MSI Prestige 14 Flip. As you can see, there’s a 52 percent increase in multi-core CPU performance as well as a 54 percent GPU upgrade, as tested on ThreeMark Steel Nomad Light. Notably, it also surpasses the current-generation M4 MacBook Air.

Intel still can’t compete against Apple on single-core performance, and that’s where the improvement is most modest. It’s not quite as fast as the M4 Pro or M4 Max, which still have the edge in every category, though the difference in multitasking performance between the X9 and M4 Pro is only 14 percent. Apple’s M5 Pro and M5 Max are also just around the corner. I’d also love to test the Core Ultra X7358H against upcoming processors in next-gen laptops like the Snapdragon X2 Elite, but I don’t yet have them in hand to compare.

The graphics really stand out, though, especially when you get to the X9 chip. For once, adding the “X” branding to the name actually feels worthwhile. Both the X7 and X9 chips use the B390 GPU, which represents the top of the line in Intel’s architecture (outside of discrete desktop graphics cards). You get 12 XE cores in the X7 and X9 configurations, which is the only difference between the two clock speeds. Intel claimed the Panther Lake’s graphics were 77 percent faster than previous-gen Lunar Lake laptops, and while I didn’t see that much of a jump, it’s hard to make a direct apples-to-apples comparison with the laptop.