Intel Panther Lake (technically) for sale
Some people have access to unreleased hardware, and they are either testing it or offering it for sale.
If you’re one of those enthusiasts who tends to buy hardware as soon as possible, even if it does not provide the full experience, then the Chinese black market is probably where one should start looking for offers. We all know platforms like Goofish, which often list unannounced hardware from Intel, including next-gen CPUs and sometimes even entire platforms. For the upcoming Panther Lake architecture, there is limited choice as far as we can tell, but hardware leakers YuuKi_AnS and GOKForFree are rushing in to help.
Both have shown some pre-released hardware based on this architecture up and running. These are not final chips; these are engineering samples that do not offer the full performance.
Source: YuuKi_AnS
YuuKi has a Panther Lake-H CPU for upcoming laptops, seemingly the version for gaming laptops, because it offers 4 Xe3 GPU cores (the platform goes up to 12). The leaker is actually selling the entire platform with motherboard, memory, and storage. It is not a typical test platform, but something that Intel uses at their labs with both CPU and memory replaceable. This is how Intel evaluates performance and can make changes on the fly if necessary.
Intel PantherLake-H LP5x T4 RVP
CPU: intel Core Ultra 3 3?5H A0
(2P + 4E + 4LPE + 4Xe3)
RAM: SKHynix LPDDR5-7467MHz 16GB
(H58G56BK8BX068-418A 4GB×4)
Source: YuuKi_AnS
According to YuuKi, his sample is from the Core Ultra 3 series. It is A0 silicon with 2 P-Cores, 4 E-Cores, and 4 LP-Cores. As said, the graphics are 4 Xe3, which as far as we know has no marketing name yet (it should be something like Arc Graphics). The system is also equipped with LPDDR5X-7467 memory with four modules, each carrying 4 GB.
Source: YuuKi_AnS, GOKForFree
GOKForFree has another sample, a low-end version with 2 P-Cores and 4 E-Cores. I’m not sure if this particular sample has LP-Cores disabled or this is some kind of special silicon that we have not yet heard about. From what we have seen in the leaks before, all Panther Lake chips may feature LP-Cores. The sample also has 4 Xe3 cores.
Intel PantherLake-H ES benchmark
2P+4E full core turbo 3.0 GHz (P-Core)
4Xe iGPU 1.5 GHz
Obviously performance is much lower than expected, but there’s no need to analyze it. Preproduction units rarely use full power and offer final clocks, not to mention the limitations of the test platform.
We do not recommend buying these chips, though. Technically they are property of Intel, and these are clearly validation platforms that should never have left the labs in the first place.
Source: YuuKi_AnS , GOKForFree
