Wildcat Lake chips have started to appear online more frequently than ever, and this is probably the first benchmark glimpse of a Wildcat Lake SKU.
We are eagerly waiting for Intel to launch its ultra-power-efficient Wildcat Lake series, which will succeed the Alder Lake N/Twin Lake series for power-efficient devices. It's expected that the CPU series will be launched in the first half of 2026, and the leaks hint towards the launch date coming closer. We have been spotting Wildcat Lake in various places , but it mostly appeared in NBD shipping manifests.
Finally, the CPU series appeared on a popular CPU benchmarking platform, . Apart from specifications, the initial impressions show how powerful Wildcat Lake will be against its predecessors. The Geekbench benchmark reveals the SKU name, "Intel Core 3 304 ", which follows the naming convention of the Panther Lake but excludes the "Ultra" designation for distinction. Core 3 304 specs show an unusual 1+4 core configuration (5 cores, 5 threads), which should have been 2+4 cores instead.
One Performance core was likely disabled when the CPU was benchmarked, and keep in mind that it's an early engineering sample, so the specifications aren't final. The specs also confirm 1.5 GHz of base clock as we previously reported, and the chip can boost up to 4.3 GHz , which is a big upgrade over Twin Lake/Alder Lake-N chips. With just 5 cores, the Core 3 304 was able to deliver 2,472 points in Single-core and 6,708 points in Multi-core tests.
Compared to the Intel Core i3 N300, the Core 3 304 made a big jump in single-core performance of nearly 86% . In the multi-core test, the Core 3 304 is nearly 49% faster than the N300. This performance boost could be a result of a higher TDP range, as the Wildcat Lake is supposedly rated at up to 15W vs 6-7W chips from the Alder Lake-N and Twin Lake families. Still, we are interested to know what difference it could have made if one P-core hadn't been disabled.
Intel Wildcat Lake vs Alder Lake-N
| CPU Family | Wildcat Lake Refresh | Wildcat Lake | Twin Lake | Alder Lake-N |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product Family | Core-N? | Core-N? | Core N/N | Core N/N |
| P-Core Architecture | Cougar Cove | Cougar Cove | N/A | N/A |
| E-Core Architecture | Darkmont | Darkmont | Gracemont | Gracemont |
| GPU Architecture | Xe3 | Xe3 | Intel UHD | Intel UHD |
| Max P-Cores | 4 | 2 | N/A | N/A |
| Max E-Cores | 4 | 4 (LP) | 8 | 8 |
| Max GPU Cores | TBD | 2 Xe3 Cores | 32 EUs | 32 EUs |
| TDP | 9-15W? | 15W | 9-15W | 9-15W |
| L3 Cache | TBD | 6 MB | 6 MB | 6 MB |
| Launch | 1H 2027? | 1H 2026? | Q1 2025 | Q1 2023 |
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