Intel’s upcoming Panther Lake Core Ultra Series 3 mobile lineup is led by the Core Ultra X9 388H, which was introduced at CES 2026 with a promise of up to 60% better multi-thread performance than its predecessor. Although laptops using the new Core Series 3 processors are only slated to arrive on January 27, early PassMark results have surfaced ahead of the official launch. The leaked data offers a first look at how Intel’s new flagship mobile chip compares both to its own previous generations and to AMD’s latest notebook silicon.
According to the PassMark benchmark results, the Core Ultra X9 388H scored 37,904 points in the multi-thread benchmark and 4,451 points in the single-thread benchmark. This result is described as a good 10% faster than the Core Ultra 9 285H, which scored 34,436 points, and as a solid 29% faster than the older Core Ultra 9 185H in the multicore benchmarks, while single-core performance for the X9 388H is characterized as basically on-par with the 285H but around 20% faster than the Core Ultra 9 185H. The article notes that these figures are based on averages from two runs that differed significantly, highlighting that one session saw the Core Ultra X9 388H reach a whopping 40,523 points, even though test laptop specifications such as memory and CPU clocks appeared unchanged, suggesting that environmental conditions or software configuration may have influenced the spread in scores.
The piece cautions that these early benchmarks should be taken with a pinch of salt but argues that they still indicate potentially impressive performance for Intel’s Panther Lake generation. For reference, the AMD Ryzen Artificial Intelligence 9 HX Pro 470 scored 36,591 points in the PassMark multicore tests and 4,216 points in the single-score tests, which places the X9 388H slightly ahead in this particular suite. Beyond CPU metrics, the integrated graphics in the X9 388H were previously benchmarked in Cyberpunk 2077, where they effectively doubled the performance of AMD’s Strix Halo Radeon 890M integrated graphics. The article concludes that the latest numbers show reasonable performance gains overall, while noting that the mid-range Panther Lake parts have yet to be fully evaluated and previously showed middling results in early benchmarks in late 2025.
