Intel’s upcoming Panther Lake CPU looks like a killer gaming handheld chip thanks to a reported massive graphics upgrade, hefty AI performance and upgraded E-cores

Intel’s 18A process node and the Panther Lake CPU that will be the first to use it are together looking like an absolutely critical turning point for the beleaguered chip maker. The good news for Intel is that Panther Lake is shaping up to be a killer mobile CPU, if the latest reports are accurate.

First up, according to some device ID listings uncovered by X user InstLatX64 (via WCCFTech), Panther Lake will be getting Intel’s next-gen Darkmont E-cores, not the Skymont E-cores already seen in the Arrow Lake generation of CPUs.

This makes sense on two counts. First, Darkmont is said to be a revised and upgraded version of Skymont, rather than a radical new design. Second, Intel is on record that Darkmont is going to be the basis of its Clearwater Forest server chip early next year. And that will be built on 18A silicon.

In other words, Darkmont has been designed for 18A, while Skymont would need to be redesigned and ported from the TSMC N3 node on which it’s currently being manufactured.

Next up, the chip is said to sport 180 TOPS of total AI processing power. That’s a big step up over the 120 TOPS of its current Lunar Lake mobile CPU. Lunar Lake largely splits its tops between a dedicated NPU and the GPU, with 48 TOPS from the NPU and 67 TOPS from the GPU. The remaining 5 TOPS come courtesy of the CPU cores.

A fair chunk of that step from 120 to 180 TOPS is likely to come from Panther Lake’s GPU, arguably the most exciting element of the new chip. It not only gets an upgrade to Intel’s new third-gen Celestial GPU architecture, but it also steps up from the eight graphics Battlemage-spec cores in Lunar Lake to 12 cores.

It’s fairly likely Celestial will be more performant per core than Battlemage. So, an expectation of over 50% more raw performance is reasonable, though that will not necessarily translate into 50%-plus higher in-game frame rates.

For the record, Panther Lake will also get Intel’s new Cougar Cove P-cores. The top SKU is reported to be a chip with four P-Cores, eight E-cores and a further four low-power E-cores, perhaps of a lower Skymont specification.

Anyhow, Panther Lake certainly has the makings of a fantastic chip for handheld gaming PCs. On paper, it should have the measure of AMD’s latest Strix Point APU, as seen in the Ayaneo 3.

Intel’s current Lunar Lake chip, used to great effect in the MSI Claw 8 AI+ A2VM handheld, is pretty competitive with AMD’s Strix Point chip, as it is. Add 50% more graphics cores and it should really fly.

Moreover, the success of the Panther Lake mobile CPU and its Celestial iGPU should help encourage Intel to keep faith with GPUs generally and roll out a discrete Celestial-based graphics card for desktop gaming PCs. Goodness knows, we need as much competition as we can get in that space.