When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Panther Lake unveiled: A deep dive into Intel's next-gen laptop CPU Take the low power of Lunar Lake, combine it with the performance of Arrow Lake, and you've got Panther Lake, Intel says. Intel's next-generation mobile processor, "Panther Lake," builds incrementally on the excellent "Lunar Lake" chip populating laptops right now. But there's something odd afoot: a "16-core, 12 Xe graphics cores" version that could be Intel's answer to AMD's Ryzen AI Max, complete with multi-frame graphics generation powered by AI. Intel has officially revealed its new Panther Lake architecture, and it gives enthusiasts a lot to chew on: a return to the performance (P-cores), efficiency (E-cores), and low-power efficiency (LP E-cores) cores of Intel's first Core Ultra chip, Meteor Lake. Intel has returned with a fifth-generation NPU capable of 50 TOPS and an image processing unit (IPU) that actually uses AI for some functions. Intel's "Xe3" GPU is worth some discussion all by itself, with its awkward branding and powerful multi-frame generation that will potentially elevate frame rates three or four times what they were before. Can Panther Lake address mainstream laptops, handheld PCs, and this new breed of "AI workstations" AMD's Strix Halo is aiming for? Intel's confidence in its 18A manufacturing process may be a bit overblown, however, as several portions of Panther Lake are still being manufactured overseas, including the 12Xe version of the new, disaggregated (separate) GPU tile.

Intel's new Arrow Lake architecture, aka the Core Ultra 200S series, brings AI capabilities onto Intel desktops. But the chip doesn't use the Copilot capabilities of Intel's mobile Lunar Lake chip -- its designers used the older NPU found on Meteor Lake instead. For now, this means that if you buy an Arrow Lake chip, you won't be able to use it with some of the new AI enhancements found within Windows 11's 2024 Update, like generative AI and the controversial Recall function. Arrow Lake's optimized NPU 3 only provides 13 TOPS, while Microsoft set 40 TOPS as the bar for Copilot status. Intel still plans to ship more than 40 million AI PCs in 2024, using the vaguer "AI PC" definition that accompanied the launch of Meteor Lake.

Intel's new Arrow Lake architecture, aka the Core Ultra 200S series, brings AI capabilities onto Intel desktops. But the chip doesn't use the Copilot capabilities of Intel's mobile Lunar Lake chip -- its designers used the older NPU found on Meteor Lake instead. For now, this means that if you buy an Arrow Lake chip, you won't be able to use it with some of the new AI enhancements found within Windows 11's 2024 Update, like generative AI and the controversial Recall function. Arrow Lake's optimized NPU 3 only provides 13 TOPS, while Microsoft set 40 TOPS as the bar for Copilot status. Intel still plans to ship more than 40 million AI PCs in 2024, using the vaguer "AI PC" definition that accompanied the launch of Meteor Lake. Arrow Lake is the not the first desktop PC architecture to include an NPU for AI.

Intel's "Arrow Lake" processor plans include both desktop and laptop chips, creating two new performance tiers atop its existing "Lunar Lake" laptop processors plus the Core Ultra 200S desktop processors it's launching today. Intel disclosed plans for three different product families: the Arrow Lake-S desktop processor as well as the Arrow Lake-HX and Arrow Lake-H processors for laptops. While Intel will begin taking orders for the Core Ultra 200S (Arrow Lake-S) family beginning on October 24, Intel will ship its notebook processors in the first quarter of 2025. A year ago, Intel introduced its 14th-gen desktop processors at an October launch event, then followed with lower-power desktop offerings at CES 2024. All three Arrow Lake families strongly emphasize energy efficiency.

Lunar Lake is Intel's Snapdragon killer. Intel's Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) was specifically designed to emphasize low power, but with competitive performance. In this it somewhat succeeds, though the Core Ultra 7 258V chip I tested can still run a distant second, or third, behind AMD's mobile Ryzen processors. But Lunar Lake also provides incredibly good, Snapdragon-like battery life with a powerful, embedded GPU capable of playing yesterday's top-tier games. Intel supplied us with a Lunar Lake-powered Asus ZenBook S14 laptop for review, and we've spent the last week or so testing it to answer the question: Of the AMD Ryzen AI 300, Intel's Lunar Lake, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, which is the best laptop processor so far in 2024? And how does Lunar Lake compare to its predecessor, Meteor Lake?

If you're wondering why you need Intel's latest Core Ultra laptop processors, code-named Lunar Lake, the answer isn't a simple one. But if you want to buy a Lunar Lake laptop, however, you'll probably understand the differences between the various chips almost immediately. Intel unveiled what it's calling the Core Ultra Series 2 at a launch event in Berlin on Tuesday. In total, there are nine new Lunar Lake processors, which will begin shipping inside laptops from PC makers like Acer, Asus, HP, and Lenovo very soon: September 24. A few months ago, Intel unveiled the guts of the new Lunar Lake architecture, offering a sneak peek into how much performance it will offer and how much power it will consume.

Intel recently revealed that its upcoming Lunar Lake chips would be available this fall for Copilot AI PCs, but the company waited until Computex to give us more technical details. For one, they'll offer up to 48 TOPs (tera operations per second) of AI performance, thanks to an updated neural processing unit (NPU). In comparison, Intel's previous Meteor Lake chips sported a 10 TOPS NPU, while AMD announced its Ryzen AI 300 chips yesterday with 50 TOPS NPUs. The AI race is on, if you couldn't tell. Intel will once again have to play catch up in the AI PC space: AMD's Ryzen AI 300 chips will be available in July alongside Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus.

For the first time in many years, you have a choice when buying a new Intel-based laptop: Intel's 14th-gen Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) or its latest 14th-gen Core HX chip. Which should you buy, and why? We'll talk about the differences between the two platforms, with some testing to help illustrate the distinctions. We've already done a deeper dive on Intel's 14th-gen Core HX, the "Raptor Lake Refresh" platform that doesn't offer that many differences from the 13th-gen "Raptor Lake" notebook platform that debuted a year ago. As the codenames suggest, the two platforms are quite similar.

You probably already own an AI PC. In the past few months, Intel and PC makers have beat the drum of the AI PC loudly and in concert with AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm. It's no secret that "AI" is the new "metaverse" -- you know, that thing that everyone was talking up a few years ago -- and executives and investors alike want to use AI to boost sales and stock prices. And it's true that AI does depend on the NPUs found in chips like Intel's Core Ultra, the brand that Intel is positioning as synonymous with on-chip AI. The same goes for AMD's Ryzen 8000 series -- which beat Intel to the desktop with an NPU -- as well as Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite.

Intel's Core Ultra era begins now! Intel is shipping its first "Meteor Lake" 14th-gen Core Ultra chips in laptops beginning today, ushering in the new "AI PC" era -- as well as actually telling you what's in them and how fast they're expected to be. Though leaked benchmark results, we've known a bit about Intel's Core Ultra product lineup. But now it's official: Intel will offer eleven new mobile Core Ultra processors, both in the "H" high-performance segment and the low-power "U" family. Intel has disbanded the earlier "P-series" lineup.