Intel just pulled off something it hasn't managed in years - beating Apple at its own game. The company's new Panther Lake chips, officially dubbed the Core Ultra Series 3, outperform Apple's latest M5 by 33 percent in multi-core performance while finally delivering competitive integrated graphics. For a company that's been scrambling to catch up with Apple Silicon since 2020, this isn't just another chip launch - it's validation that Intel's $8.9 billion government-backed turnaround plan is actually working.
Intel hasn't had a moment like this in a long time. The company just shipped its Panther Lake processors - the Core Ultra Series 3 - and early testing reveals something remarkable: these chips actually beat Apple's M5 in multi-core performance. Not by a slim margin either. We're talking 33 percent faster.
This matters because Intel has spent the last four years watching Apple Silicon redefine what laptop processors should be. The M1 launch in 2020 made Intel's chips look power-hungry and slow by comparison. But Panther Lake represents the culmination of a turnaround strategy announced five years ago by former CEO Pat Gelsinger, who called it the "cornerstone of the company's turnaround strategy."
Wired's Luke Larsen tested two laptops powered by the new chips: the Core Ultra X7 358H in the MSI Prestige 14 Flip and the flagship Core Ultra X9 388H in a 16-inch Lenovo IdeaPad reference unit. Both are 16-core CPUs split between four performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and four low-power efficiency cores. The results speak for themselves.
In Cinebench 24 multi-core testing, the X9 388H scored 1,285 points compared to the M5's 922 - that 33 percent advantage. Even the lower-tier X7 358H managed 968 points, still outpacing Apple's base M5. Intel also took the crown in integrated graphics, with the X9 scoring 5,883 in 3DMark Steel Nomad Light versus the M5's 5,077.
