Intel Panther Lake laptops leak early onto retailer sites, so it looks like 18A really is ready to roll

Intel says it plans to launch the new Panther Lake mobile CPU at the CES show in January. But what with Intel's patchy track record of late, let's just say seeing is believing. With that in mind, it's reassuring to find that laptops based on Panther Lake have popped up on more one etailer, albeit presumably by accident.

MSI's Prestige laptops, in both 14- and 16-inch formats, and ranging from roughly 2,000 Euros to 2,500 Euros, or about $2,300 to $3,000, appeared on a French etailer, though it's far from clear if the pricing is final.

All of the various models were listed with 32 GB of RAM, which is notable given the ongoing RAMpocolypse. But perhaps the most interesting are the variants with Panther Lake 'X' chips.

That includes the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H and the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H. Both of those chips get the big Panther Lake CPU die, making for a total of four Performance, eight Efficient, and four low-power Efficient CPU cores.

The 'X' prefix is the really intriguing bit, however, and is thought to refer to Panther Lake SKUs with the larger GPU chiplet containing 12 Xe3 GPU cores. The rest of the Panther Lake range makes do with a smaller GPU chiplet containing just four Xe3 GPU cores.

According to the latest leaks, the full 12-core GPU will be branded Intel Arc B390, with the 'B' prefix aligning it with second-gen Battlemage GPUs, like the Intel Arc B580, despite the 'Xe3' architecture making it theoretically a third-gen product.

Of course, we've covered off Intel's confusing Arc branding before. Suffice to say here that none of it makes any sense at all.

Meanwhile, in the US Walmart briefly had a listing for an HP Omnibook X Flip 16 powered by Panther Lake. It's since been taken down (via Videocardz), but while it was up it was much cheaper at $999. The Flip 16 was configured with an Intel Ultra 7 355, which is a fairly low-end Panther Lake chip expected to rock four Performance and four low-power Efficient cores.

The model was also listed with 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB SSD and a 2K screen. So, it's a fairly mainstream offering.

Leaks like these are pretty commonplace as launch dates near. But the main takeaway here is that Intel seems to be on track to launch Panther Lake at CES in a few weeks, as per its most recently stated plan.

That's got to be good news and indicates that Intel's new 18A chip production node, on which former CEO Pat Gelsinger said he had bet the company, must be in at least tolerable shape.

That said, it took several years from the launch of Intel's first 10 nm chips before that node (now rebranded Intel 7) became a volume staple across Intel's CPU range. So, the launch of Panther Lake in January won't guarantee that 18A is an immediate roaring success. But it will at least be step one in getting Intel back on track.

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