Oh no, stay back.
You know, I can't even pretend to be that mad about this. Thanks. MSI
sponsored this video to show off a couple of laptops that are built around
what might be the single most exciting thing that I've seen out of Intel in
years. Core Ultra Series 3, aka Panther
Lake, is here. And yes, you're a good
Mr. Kitty, aren't you? Let's start with the big picture. The new XC3 integrated
GPU in Panther Lake is up to 50% faster
than last gen, which if you guys remember was already shockingly
competitive with AMD's top mobile gaming APUs. This could be a stunning upset.
And there's more. Intel boasts 50% lower
power in multi-threaded loads at similar performance compared to last gen. Are
you kidding me right now? Again guys, I remind you this is compared to a
platform that already managed over 20
hours of battery life in some designs. The other big one if you care about
consumer choice and costs is flexibility. And you can see that
clearly on display in the machines that MSI has us showing off here today. Both
the Prestige series and the newly redesigned Stealth gaming laptop are
equipped with a 16 core Core Ultra 9 CPU. And yet, this one has high-speed
soldered LPDDR5X memory and a whopping
12 core XC3 GPU, while this one uses
sodium memory for easy user upgrades and a smaller GPU core since it's going to
be paired with up to a mobile RTX 5090. Anyway, more on these later, though.
First, I want to talk about how Intel's modular approach to this platform starts
way down at the chip level. If you look
closely at this Prestige series motherboard, there are fine lines
between the various modules that make up the Panther Lake SOC. And Intel sent
over these great slides that show exactly what it is that we are looking
at here. At the top left, we've got their largest CPU module with a total of
16 cores. To the right is an IO die that contains PCI Express, USB, networking,
Thunderbolt, that sort of thing. Above and below that are filler dies. Then at
the bottom left is an absolute unit of an integrated GPU with 12 overhauled XC3
battle mage cores. Intel has a total of three different Panther Lake
configurations to meet different needs. And they vary in the amount of CPU
compute, GPU compute, and IO that they're equipped with. But what they all
have in common is advanced packaging and high-speed dieto-d interconnects that uh
lead me to believe that this is just the
beginning. Intel describes their scalable fabric as IP agnostic, which is
a boring business monster way of saying that nothing would prevent a partnership
with say NVIDIA to put a GeForce GPU
right on package with Intel CPUs. And I
don't know, who knows? Maybe a a risk 5 AI accelerator from Tensor torrent or
something. The sky is the limit. For now, we don't have that, but Panther
Lake is still packed with other exciting bits, too. The new media engine supports
encode and decode operations across an insane range of codecs. The new IPU
looks poised to significantly improve webcam performance and flexibility for
form factors that might demand more cameras. And the new NPU or neural
processor is amazing. Not because it has
more AI tops or whatever, but because instead Intel opted to maintain the same
50 top performance from last generation while shrinking it and reducing its
power consumption so they could spend that die area on other cooler things.
Stellar choice, Intel. There's a whole bunch of other architectural stuff too,
like the way that the bigger compute dies share level three cache between the
pores and the extra ecores, while the ecores in the low power cluster just
kind of vibe on their own for maximum efficiency. Also, the thread director is
better at managing task scheduling now. But yeah, you've heard enough yak yak.
Let's see this thing in action. MSI actually loaded up one of their Prestige
16s with Cyberpunk for me to game on.
I'm not allowed to show the FPS counter, but I am allowed to play with the
settings, and I am allowed to tell you guys how much FPS it feels like. Uh, was
this the one? Did the battery finally die? It was running the whole time I was
writing the script. Let's load something in the city. I
don't want to go easy on it. Not going to lie, guys.
There is clearly some upscaling going on here right now. And she's a little
floaty. I think we've got a little bit of frame generation on,
but this is a very usable experience.
So, we're in kind of performance mode for XCSS running on low. Wo! No
combination of low and medium. We are using frame gen, but we're running at
2880 by 18800. That's insane. Why would we even do that? Okay, let's turn it
back down to a reasonable resolution. can't go full screen. Uh, you know what?
That's fine. We're running at 1920 x 1200 now. Now, we're getting a better
feel for the raw performance. If I had to guess, I'd say this is probably in
the 40 to 45 FPS range. Very, very
playable. And like
it's not even that loud. Like, it's hard to believe we are getting that level of
performance with this cooler.
Look at the thickness of this vapor chamber. And you got this tiny little
heat sink array, which raises the obvious question. Are they going to put
this thing in a gaming handheld or are they just going to tease me with laptops? Well, MSI wouldn't confirm
anything. But I will say that the vibe felt pretty good, so I'm optimistic. For
now, though, the Prestige series is pretty darn shiny as far as silver
medals go. MSI has completely overhauled
the fit and finish of their business laptops, including more rounded edges
and a new letter mark. And both the 14
and 16-in models are available as either a traditional clam shell eh or as a
twoin- one with their nano pen being a pretty cool solution to never losing
your stylus again. It just tucks in right here at the bottom and gets 45
minutes of charge in just 13 seconds. I
think the coolest feature though might be their new action trackpad. It's
really big, which is pretty neat. But it
also allows you to configure better touch tool style gestures like sliding
here for volume control or sliding here for display brightness.
Pretty cool, right? You can even configure your own functions. Both sizes
feature 16x10 OLED displays with the 16-in going up to 120 Hz variable
refresh rate. and both feature Windows Hello on the fingerprint power button as
well as the webcam with its really nicely indicated privacy slider. All in
all, the package is shockingly thin when you consider the performance and the IO
on tap. Turns out there never was a reason to take away our USBA and HDMI
ports. The same is true of the completely redesigned MSI Stealth. Man,
what a glow up this thing got. I think
they finally did it. I think they finally built something that you could pull out at a business meeting without
raising any eyebrows. Maybe turn the RGB off on the keyboard. Then take it back
to your hotel room and game up a storm. This uses the small GPU Panther Lake
with up to 16 CPU cores alongside an RTX
5060, 5070, 5080, or 5090 mobile
depending on uh how much pain you like in your wallet region. Probably the
coolest thing about this from a gaming perspective is the extra 20 watts of GPU
power that MSI managed compared to their last gen despite it being in a device
that is less than 17 mm thick. Oh, and
since we're at cool stuff, I guess the display is pretty cool, too. 2560x600
16x10 has to be the sweet spot for pixel
density and image clarity at this size. And while it doesn't support variable
refresh rate, it is OLED and it does go
up to 240 Hz. I also always like to see
dual Thunderbolt 4 ports and 2 and 1/2 gig networking. This is a pretty sick
machine for gamers, and it's pretty good for non-gamers, too. We get a giant
trackpad, albeit without action macros, large front-facing speakers, and up to
100 Ws of USB PD charging. So, if you
know that you're not going to be gaming, you can leave the bulky power brick at
home. If, on the other hand, you like bulkier things.
>> Oh, yeah. >> They're also showing off a redesigned
Raider series here. Yeah, sure, she's a little thicker, but you'll also get up
to 300 [snorts] W of total system power for its 16 core
Aerolake CPU and mobile RTX 5090. Now,
one thing we didn't see in MSI's demo room was the smallest Panther Lake. So
there are still some question marks around that one. But if the bigger
kitties are anything to go by, this is a big return to form for Intel and it
couldn't come at a more important time. Apple silicon has upended the laptop
processor market more broadly and on the PC side, the dual threats from AMD and
more recently Qualcomm haven't gone away either. Now, we just have to hope that
Intel can continue to execute on this path now that they have fired the leader
who put them back on the right track before even giving him a chance to see
his vision come to life. But I'm not going to think about that right now. Instead, I'm going to think of a fun
video for you to watch. How about checking out the one where I installed a
new MSI gaming monitor with a fifth gen QD OLED panel that addresses both the
magenta issue and the soft surface hardness of previous QD OLEDs. It's
pretty sick.