Core Ultra series 3, codenamed Panther Lake, is Intel's third Core Ultra generation and the first client processor built on the company's 18A process. It arrived at CES in January 2026 and reached retail from the end of that month.

The headline change is graphics. The top parts carry a twelve-core Xe3 tile that Intel sells under the Intel Arc B390 name, and reviewers measured it trading blows with entry-level discrete laptop graphics at 1080p rather than merely playing older titles.

The neural engine moved too. NPU 5 is rated at 50 TOPS INT8, comfortably past the 40 TOPS floor Microsoft set for Copilot+ features, so on-device transcription, background effects and image tools run locally instead of in the cloud.

Model names now include an X on the parts with the larger graphics tile. A Core Ultra X9 388H or Core Ultra X7 358H carries the full Arc B390; a Core Ultra 9 386H or Core Ultra 7 365 does not.