Intel's next-gen Panther Lake CPU pops up in Geekbench with decent but not exactly spectacular benchmark numbers

Intel's long awaited Panther Lake CPU has made an appearance in the Geekbench results browser (via Videocardz). And the early numbers look, well, kind of okay.

According to the Geekbench entry, we're talking 2,849 single-core points and 15,434 multi-core points. Arguably, it's the single-core result that's most interesting as it theoretically allows for a direct comparison between different generations of Intel Performance cores. The multi-core comparison is complicated by the vagaries of difference Performance, Efficient and Low Power Efficient core configurations, albeit the total result is, ultimately, the total result.

The specific Panther Lake model appearing in the Geekbench results is the Core Ultra 9 386H, a mobile CPU as all Panther Lake chips will be at launch. It shows up as a 16-core model on Geekbench and is expected to have four Performance, eight Efficient, and four Low Power Efficient cores.

The closest existing Intel CPU for comparison is the Core Ultra 9 285H, which is a similarly configured 16-core mobile chip, albeit with six Performance and two Low Power Efficient cores. It scores 2,608 single-core points and 14,812 multi-core points.

In that context, Intel has made incremental rather than substantial gains, at least as far as these results go. No doubt the chip tested and its microcode aren't entirely representative of final retail product. But it does not look like Intel has made huge gains in pure performance terms with Panther Lake.

Indeed, Apple's latest M5 chip is cranking out over 4,000 points in Geekbench single-core, as is Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 chip. So, in terms of pure single-core performance, these new Panther Lake results are miles off the industry best. For further context, AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 also scores around 2,800 points in the single-core test, so x86 chips in general lag the best Arm CPUs, right now.

Caveating all this, of course, is the fact that Geekbench is but one data point and not even an actual real-world application. But it does broadly align with overall performance capabilities and so if these results are accurate, it would be surprising if Panther Lake was a performance champ.

The other aspect that Geekbench doesn't help us with is power consumption. As a mobile CPU on Intel's new 18A process node, efficiency and battery life are every bit as interesting and important as outright performance.

For further insight in those aspects, we'll have to wait for Panther Lake's launch at CES in January. But for now, Intel's new chip doesn't look like it's going to be a revolution, at least in terms of performance.

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