From Tom's Hardware: According to the company, Intel is set to share details of its Panther Lake lineup of mobile processors next week. Now, leaks are starting to seep out ahead of the reportedly imminent announcements. A few weeks ago, the name "Core Ultra X" started popping up in the rumor mill with reliable tipsters reporting on a potential new branding that Intel would adopt for Panther Lake. Up until now, we didn't have any concrete info on this, but new leaks from one of the most trusted leakers in the business, the oddly-named Golden Pig Upgrade, have just filled us in on the purported details.
Intel's Xe3 "Celestial" graphics IP will debut on Panther Lake with every SKU featuring integrated graphics. The models with the highest-spec'd iGPUs are what will reportedly be referred to as Core Ultra X. The "X" designation allegedly represents 12 Xe3 GPU cores, a major uplift from the 8 maximum Xe2-based cores we had on Lunar Lake. But that's the thing — Panther Lake is not a Lunar Lake successor because that featured on-package memory; Panther Lake supports externally-mounted RAM. That's probably why the model numbering on Panther Lake is also shifted around.
Speaking of which, Golden Pig Upgrade lists four SKUs: three with the Core Ultra X designation and one without. Apparently, only Core Ultra X9 and X7 are getting the full-fat 12 Xe3 GPU cores, while the Core Ultra 5 midrange offering will have, at best, 10 Xe3 cores. So, overall, Core Ultra X means 12 Xe3 cores; Core Ultra 3x8 means at least 10 Xe3 cores; and Core Ultra 3x6 means less than 10 Xe3 cores. In general, Panther Lake will introduce more CPU cores across the board as well, alongside improved iGPUs, as explained below.
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