Intel’s large launch for CES 2026 is its Core Extremely Sequence 3 of cell chips, based mostly on the Panther Lake architecture it introduced in October. The brand new structure’s largest improve over the Core Extremely 200’s resides within the new Xe3 graphics cores that promise considerably higher efficiency at decrease energy draw than the Xe2 generation in Lunar Lake, utilized by a number of the Core Extremely 200 variants. And the corporate briefly talked about there will be a future handheld console platform based mostly on Panther Lake. There are zero particulars now, however anticipate some later this yr.
A lot of the non-graphics elements of Panther Lake embrace a variety of optimizations over earlier generations, plus a transfer to Intel’s smaller (2nm) 18A course of node, which ought to end result within the related chips being higher total, drawing notably much less energy. The primary programs incorporating the three Sequence processors start transport instantly.
New naming nomenclature comes with the territory. For one, it is now often known as Sequence 3 — or perhaps I simply by no means known as the last-gen Sequence 2 — and there is a new “X” within the chip names to indicate the incorporation of the Arc Professional B390 graphics, which has the utmost variety of Xe3 cores (previously code-named 12Xe). It has Extremely 9 and Extremely 7 variations, and the latter options the GPU for which benchmark performance was leaked in November.
There is a Core Extremely 5 chip with Arc B370 graphics, which is not denoted by an X. I am nonetheless plowing via the chip lineup to make sense of it, as a result of all of the yay!-gaming efficiency they quote is for that Arc Professional GPU; there isn’t any indication of how all the opposite chips will fare. The identical goes for Intel’s quote of 27 hours of battery life for streaming video; that is for an Arc Professional-equipped system as properly.
Intel claims considerably larger gaming body charges, so long as you are profiting from XeSS 3 upscaling and gaming at 1080p. 1080p is ok, however it would not account for connecting to a higher-resolution exterior monitor, amongst different issues. XeSS 3 will embrace multi-frame-gen at launch, which makes use of AI to extrapolate a number of subsequent frames from a single.
Intel took a extra modular method to the GPU tiling association, which supplies them extra flexibility for scaling efficiency up and all the way down to hit measurement, worth and energy necessities for particular person laptop computer producers.
Intel says preorders for the preliminary programs begin Tuesday.
