Intel’s Core Ultra X9 388H competes favorably with AMD’s top-performing models in recent benchmark leaks.

      Your next slim and lightweight laptop may no longer require a dedicated GPU.

      Intel appears to be ready to compete with AMD's fastest mobile processors once again. Recent benchmarks for the upcoming Core Ultra X9 388H from the "Panther Lake" series have leaked, revealing surprisingly strong performance.

      Although this is merely an engineering sample, it is already matching the single-core speed of AMD's leading "Strix Halo" processors and exhibiting a noticeable improvement in multi-core performance compared to Intel's current offerings.

      The new Geekbench leak provides insight into this chip's capabilities, and on paper, it looks impressive. The X9 388H achieved a single-core score of 3,057 and a multi-core score of 17,687.

      To contextualize this achievement: its single-core speed is nearly equivalent to that of AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395, which currently leads the mobile AI chip market. Additionally, it is approximately 15% faster than Intel's own high-end chip, the Core Ultra 9 285H.

      What stands out here is not just the sheer speed, but also the energy efficiency. While AMD's chips tend to run hot under high power consumption, Intel is achieving these figures with a base TDP of 45W. This suggests we may finally see premium performance without compromising battery life in ultra-slim laptops.

      The chip features a 16-core hybrid architecture (combining performance and efficiency cores) and can boost up to 5.1GHz. Furthermore, early tests indicate that the integrated graphics (Arc B390) are performing impressively—comparable to a dedicated RTX 3050 laptop GPU.

      This is significant, as Intel has spent the past few years trying to catch up in both efficiency and integrated graphics. These results hint that Panther Lake could change the game, providing Windows laptops with the battery life and graphics performance typically seen in offerings from Apple or AMD.

      For consumers, this suggests that your next laptop might not require a large dedicated graphics card to run games or edit videos. It could deliver excellent performance within a sleeker, cooler design.

      However, benchmarks are just figures until we see actual laptops in action. We need to evaluate how these chips cope with heat and prolonged workloads in practical use. But with a rollout planned for 2025, the laptop market seems poised for intense competition once more.