Microsoft's console is certainly showing its age, but achieving this level of performance on an iGPU remains appreciable.
Since the presentation and subsequent release of the first machines equipped with Panther Lake processors, many testers have highlighted Intel's progress in the graphics field. Until now, if users wanted a processor with a high-performance integrated graphics solution, they had no choice but to turn to AMD chips. This no longer seems to be the case, even if Intel still has some way to go.
On the left, the PlayStation 5 wins hands down on the iGPU of a Panther Lake processor © Digital Foundry
The Digital Foundry website set out to compare the performance of the ARC B390 - the name of the iGPU of Intel's most powerful Panther Lake processors - with that of well-known and recognized devices. For example, a notebook equipped with the already famous Panther Lake Core Ultra 9 388H was pitted against a PlayStation 5 on Finnish studio Remedy's game Alan Wake 2. Here, Digital Foundry arranged for the two platforms to be configured as closely as possible, and... the PlayStation 5 won by a wide margin. Mind you, this is no surprise: Sony's console is designed specifically for video games.
The Xbox Series S, on the other hand, has to bow to Intel's new chip © Digital Foundry
Digital Foundry's second test turned out to the advantage of the Panther Lake solution. Here, the chip was measured against Microsoft's "small" home console, the Xbox Series S. A lower-performance model than the Xbox Series X, it is effectively outclassed by Panther Lake's ARC B390 by a margin of just 3.9%, but the Panther Lake configuration is far more pleasing to the eye thanks to an average very close to 30 frames per second (28.5 fps to be exact). Digital Foundry points out that the ARC B390 solution, more powerful than the Xbox Series S, is also capable of dominating dedicated cards such as the GeForce RTX 1060 or the Radeon RX 580... but not yet a GeForce RTX 2060.
