Benchmarked: Intel’s Core Ultra 3 laptop graphics challenge RTX GPUs

It’s hard to believe, but Intel’s just-launched Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) laptop graphics may, in fact, be as good as a laptop from as little as two years ago running a discrete RTX 4000-series discrete GPU.

That was the challenge that Intel put before reporters at a special benchmarking session of Panther Lake here at CES 2026. We were invited to take a prototype Lenovo laptop with a Core Ultra X9 388H inside of it, configured with twelve integrated Xe3 GPU cores inside of it, which Intel calls the Intel Arc B390.

Reporters were invited to test games and only games, but whatever games and at whatever resolutions we’d like. Unfortunately (maybe?), Panther Lake’s performance was so good that I stopped trying to test multiple games, and instead started running the tests to reflect our own benchmarks recorded on gaming notebooks.

Is Panther Lake as good as a RTX 4050 creator-class laptop? The short answer? If not, it’s certainly close.

There’s a wrinkle: Intel supports its latest XeSS technology inside the Arc B390, which supports resolution scaling (render in a low resolution, then upscale it) as well as AI-generated frames — specifically, three AI-generated frames for each rendered frame. Some games let you turn this feature on and off, and I wanted to let Panther Lake render each frame, but also see what would happen when the frame generation technologies were turned on.

Core Ultra Series 3: early test results

Keep in mind that we were given less than 90 minutes for testing, which limited our available runs. We were also prohibited from testing synthesized benchmarks or those which focused on the CPU — those will be restricted to the formal review process, which should begin sometime soon. We weren’t prohibited from unplugging Lenovo’s laptop, but that wasn’t done for want of time, either. Finally, not all runs were performed thrice, which we do to eliminate any one-time glitches.

With that said, Panther Lake’s integrated Arc graphics are the real deal.

I compared Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 chip to the Series 2 chip (Lunar Lake) as well as the Core Ultra Series 1 (Meteor Lake) that Intel has launched over the past few years. I also added Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X1 Elite and AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 chip, Note that I’m eager to benchmark the latest Snapdragon X2 Elite as well as the Ryzen AI 400 laptop processor, but neither company has made those chips available to test.

In my Lunar Lake review, I tested the chip against a slew of benchmarks, including two games, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Cyberpunk:2077. The former is a few years out of date, but with lots of testing to back it up. I tested Cyberpunk at 1080p resolution on Low settings, but with all rendered frames.

Compare the 81 fps from the Panther Lake notebook versus the 37 fps from a couple of years ago. That’s incredibly impressive!

I then turned to the older Shadow game, where the Core Ultra Series chip shone again when run at 1080p in Low settings. A 112 fps frame rate is more than playable. To my knowledge, these were all rendered frames as well, as the games was released long before XeSS shipped.

Those framerates push into gaming laptop territory. So why not use the settings that we use for our gaming laptop tests?

The difference isn’t that great: 1080p settings at the Highest setting for Shadow generated a frame rate of about 75 fps, which puts it a bit below the other laptops I quickly assembled, but it still incredibly great for integrated graphics — on par with the RTX 3060 from just a few years ago.

Ditto for Cyberpunk, whose Panther Lake scores are just below the others — all of which pack discrete GPUs rather than integrated on-CPU graphics.

Basically, these two charts show that Intel still has a little work to do when purely rendered frames are considered, as least compared to laptops with standalone graphics cards.

Intel believes (and why wouldn’t they?) that you’ll turn on frame generation when you can, however, simply to smooth out the gameplay. And when you do that, things change dramatically.

When image upscaling and frame generation were turned on in Cyberpunk (1080p, Low), the frame rate jumped from 81 fps to a whopping 169 frames per second. Again, that was evidence that I was wasting my time comparing Panther Lake to other integrated graphics; those scores are something that a dedicated gaming laptop will deliver.

My tests showed, however, that you can’t get too crazy — not quite yet, anyway. At 1080p Ultra settings, the Lenovo laptop with the Core Ultra Series 3 chip inside produced 47 frames per second in Cyberpunk with frame generation and upscaling turned off. Though, to be fair, that remains incredibly impressive for integrated graphics, and is more than playable for people unfamiliar with hulking gaming machines.

With XeSS turned on, the benchmark score leaped to 111 fps — again, fantastic for integrated graphics! But set to the maximum Ray Tracing Overdrive setting, the laptop produced scores of 8 fps with frame-gen off, and 34 fps with it on — barely, barely playable. On-chip graphics aren’t quite ready to challenge discrete GPUs (Nvidia ones specifically) when you’ve got all the bleeding-edge visual bells and whistles turned on.

Still, if you’ve wondered if you should take Intel’s claims seriously…yes, you probably should. I’m eager to give Panther Lake a more thorough examination soon.