Intel’s Lunar Lake cell chips (proven above) even have first rate gaming chops. Which is why information of a big graphics improve in Intel’s next-gen Panther Lake CPUs is so intriguing. According to a delivery manifest noticed by X person X86deadandback, Panther Lake sports activities 12 Xe3-spec graphics cores.
That’s 50% greater than the 8 Xe2 cores in Lunar Lake. What’s extra, you’d anticipate the per-core efficiency of the Xe3 graphics structure in Panther Lake, also called Celestial, to be superior to the Battlemage-based Xe2 {hardware} in Lunar Lake.
So, that is 50% extra graphics cores, and every core extra performant. Of course, it is not clear how Xe3 or Celestial is architected. And it is not inconceivable that Intel has rejigged the cores.
With the present Xe2 structure, the eight cores include a complete of 1,024 shaders. The identical primary format would put the iGPU in Panther Lake at 1,536 shaders. But that is not completely assured.
You can try the delivery manifest entry for your self on the NBD website (simply seek for “Q7A5”). But if that is how Panther Lake does end up, it ought to make for a really good little chip for gaming handhelds. Lunar Lake already works fairly properly in that utility and a brand new chip with 50%-plus extra iGPU efficiency could be extraordinarily compelling.
What’s extra, the Panther Lake iGPU ought to help ML-based upscaling, one thing no present AMD Ryzen APU helps. That’s as a result of solely AMD’s newest RDNA 4 graphics structure at the moment helps AI-accelerated upscaling. And RDNA 4 has but to make it into an AMD APU. So, it is not inconceivable that Panther Lake may have the makings of the most effective chip for gaming handhelds and a uncommon excellent news story for Intel.
Indeed, Panther Lake might be attention-grabbing for extra than simply its iGPU. It’s set to be the primary chip to make use of Intel’s upcoming 18A course of node. Intel’s chip manufacturing sub-unit appears to be all at sea, at the moment, what with the corporate making scary noises about giving up on future course of nodes ought to it not safe clients for 14A, the node that follows 18A.
But Panther Lake is an opportunity for Intel to show that it will probably nonetheless do superior silicon and it is due out later this yr. By a number of metrics, then, it is laborious to think about a brand new Intel CPU that has appeared fairly as crucial. And it will not be lengthy now earlier than we discover out simply what Intel has achieved with Panther Lake.
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