Intel has introduced the Xe3 graphics architecture, which will debut in Panther Lake mobile processors. According to the developers, the performance of the new iGPU is more than 50% higher than that of the Xe2 graphics in Lunar Lake chips, and energy efficiency has increased by approximately 40% compared to Arrow Lake-H.
In its top configuration, Xe3 features 12 compute cores, 96 XMX engines, 16 MB of L2 cache, and 12 ray tracing units.
At the closed Tech Tour 2025 demo, Intel engineers showcased a Panther Lake-based laptop prototype running a new version of Painkiller. At a native resolution of 1080p, the game ran at 45–50 frames per second, and with multi-frame generation (4×) and upscaling enabled, it exceeded 200 fps. Power consumption did not exceed 45 W, which is within the target power range of the processor.
A PC Gamer journalist who tested the demo noted that access to graphics settings was limited, but visually the quality level appeared to be "high" rather than maximum.
The flagship version of Xe3 also supports up to 128 GB of LPDDR5x-9600, providing approximately 13% more memory bandwidth than the fastest Lunar Lake models.
In addition to the gaming configuration, Panther Lake will also receive a simplified version with 4 Xe3 cores and 4 MB of L2 cache — it is designed for systems with a discrete video card.
Although Xe3 is not yet the Celestial architecture, which is expected to form the basis of the next generation of Intel discrete video cards, the new graphics look promising. According to experts, it could become an excellent base not only for laptops, but also for future portable gaming devices.