Hot on the heels of the successful Panther Lake launch, Intel launched a new lineup of processors codenamed “Wildcat Lake.” While the Core Ultra Series 3 got all the initial glory, these new Core Series 3 chips are the budget-friendly counterparts designed to power more affordable laptops. Intel is specifically targeting people and small businesses still clinging to machines from about five years ago, giving them a pretty compelling reason to finally trade in their old laptops.
If you are currently rocking a laptop with a five-year-old i7-1185G7, the performance jump here looks quite significant. Intel is claiming a 47% improvement in single-thread tasks and a 41% boost for multi-threaded workloads. Even more impressive is the GPU AI performance, which is reportedly up to 2.8 times better than the older hardware. It is all built using Intel’s 18A process, which the company is very keen to point out is the “most advanced logic node currently manufactured in the US.”
This is also being billed as the first hybrid AI-ready chip in the standard Core Series, supporting up to 40 platform TOPS for various AI tasks. Beyond the clever silicon, you are getting modern essentials like Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and support for two Thunderbolt 4 ports. Perhaps the most practical upgrade is the efficiency; Intel says these chips use up to 64% less power than the previous-gen Core 7 150U, which should hopefully make all-day battery life a reality rather than just a marketing dream.
In terms of the actual hardware under the bonnet, almost every model in this lineup features six cores, though the entry-level version drops down to five. You will see peak turbo speeds ranging from 4.3GHz to 4.8GHz and a standard 6MB of cache across the board. They are also quite flexible with memory, supporting up to 64GB of DDR5 or 48GB of LPDDR5X. Everything runs at a cool 15W base power, though they can push up to 35W when you really need to get things moving.
You can expect to see these chips appearing in the wild almost immediately. Intel says they are landing in more than 70 different laptop designs starting now. The list of manufacturers is massive, covering the big names like Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung, alongside brands like Acer, Asus, and MSI.