The year 2026 will be dominated by APUs, processors with integrated high-performance graphics.
Until now, when we talk about PCs without dedicated graphics cards, but still capable of running video games decently, we think mainly of AMD. Whether in notebooks, mini-PCs, desktop configurations or handheld consoles, AMD is by far the dominant player. NVIDIA is currently showing little interest in this market, and Intel's APUs are still a little weak to compete on equal terms with Ryzen.
Intel details its new Panther Lake architecture © Intel
" Until now ", because things could well change over the next year. NVIDIA is still working with MediaTek to design a very powerful chip, in all areas. However, this chip is still behind schedule and, for the moment, all this is just theory. More to the point, it's Intel that we're expecting something very interesting with the release of Panther Lake, a generation primarily designed for notebooks, but which should also affect the world of mini-PCs and portable consoles.
Panther Lake ARC B390 versus previous Intel iGPUs © Wccftech
Panther Lake is first and foremost a new generation of processors, with all the advances that this implies for CPU cores. However, Intel has realized that it is lagging behind AMD in graphics, and that it could benefit from integrating its most powerful GPU cores into its new generation. In fact, the most powerful Panther Lake processor should feature 16 CPU cores and 12 Xe3 cores for a graphics solution dubbed ARC B390, which Intel would like to see overtake the Radeon 890M of AMD's most powerful APUs. The latest leaks seem to prove him right.
Panther Lake ARC B390 versus previous AMD iGPUs © Wccftech
Indeed, relayed by Wccftech, the leaks in question put the ARC B390 up against multiple solutions. First of all, it's the older Intel graphics solutions that are outperformed by the ARC B390: the ARC 140V is 45.3% slower and the ARC 140T is a further 40.4% slower. Compared to AMD solutions, it's less obvious, but the ARC B390 is still interesting: the Radeon 860M is 48.7% slower, while the Radeon 890M is still 13.6% slower. Even when compared with smaller graphics cards, the ARC B390 performs well: the Intel graphics solution is 22.2% slower than a GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop, but that's not ridiculous.
Panther Lake ARC B390 against some dedicated graphics cards © Wccftech
The Panther Lake processors are due to be unveiled by Intel at CES 2026 next January, and the first machines equipped with them should arrive in successive waves throughout the first quarter of 2026.
