Intel’s big launch for CES 2026 is the Core Ultra Series 3 of mobile chips, based on Panther Lake Architecture it was announced in October. The biggest upgrade in the Core Ultra 200’s new architecture resides in the new Xe3 graphics cores that promise better performance at lower power draw than Xe2 generation of Lunar Lakeused in some of the variants of the Core Ultra 200. And the company briefly mentioned that it has an upcoming handheld console platform based on Panther Lake. No details yet, but expect some later this year.

Most of the non-graphics aspects of Panther Lake include many optimizations of previous generations, including a move to a smaller (2nm) 18A process node by Intel, which should result in related chips that are better overall, with less power. The first systems to include the 3 Series processors began shipping immediately.

New naming nomenclature comes with the territory. For one, it’s now known as Series 3 — or maybe I never called it last-gen Series 2 — and has a new “X” in the chip names to denote the inclusion of Arc Pro B390 graphics, with maximum Xe3 cores (formerly code-named 12Xe). It has Ultra 9 and Ultra 7 versions, and the latter has a GPU part benchmark performance is dropped in November.

There’s a Core Ultra 5 chip with Arc B370 graphics, which isn’t marked with an X. I’m still plowing through the chip line to figure it out, because all the yay!-gaming performance they quote for the Arc Pro GPU; there is no indication of how all the other chips will be. The same goes for Intel’s quote of 27 hours of battery life for streaming video; that is also for an Arc Pro equipped system.

Intel claims higher gaming frame rates, as long as you take advantage of the XeSS 3 upgrade and play at 1080p. 1080p is fine, but it doesn’t account for connecting a higher resolution external monitor, and other things. XeSS 3 will include multi-frame-gen at launch, which uses AI to extrapolate multiple subsequent frames from one.

Intel has taken a more modular approach to the GPU tiling arrangement, giving them more flexibility for scaling performance up and down to suit the size, price and power requirements of individual laptop manufacturers.

Intel said preorders for the initial systems will begin Tuesday.