Following the reveal of Panther Lake processors and their accompanying Xe3 graphics, many, including us, were confused about the GPU naming selected by Intel. Instead of slotting it alongside the Celestial C-Series, the company decided to put it in the Battlemage B-Series, adding to the confusion caused by the leaked Core Ultra X naming scheme.
A bit of background. When Intel announced its new GPU roadmap, it indicated that Xe was Alchemist, Xe2 was Battlemage, Xe3 was Celestial, and Xe-Next (Xe4) was Druid. But now, we have an Xe3 GPU within the B-Series, which is meant for Xe2 GPUs. So, in an attempt to clarify the situation, Intel Fellow Tom Petersen has explained to PCWorld the reason behind this choice.
“The way to think about it, Xe3 is our next-generation architecture. We launched it here at ITT, and we’re using it in Panther Lake. So, there’s no question about the architecture; Panther Lake is Xe3. Now, the naming within our SoCs is a bit of a complex question. We decided to keep the B-series name for Panther Lake to leverage the good work we did with Battlemage. People know the B-series, they know the B580, they know about all of our naming. So, we are not ready to move to ‘C’ because we don’t think it’s the right time, basically. When we move to our next architecture, which we’ve also teased a bit – Xe3P – that will be when we make the naming change,” said Tom Petersen.
The important takeaway here is that Panther Lake is indeed featuring the latest Celestial graphics architecture despite Intel’s illogical naming. Thus, we won’t see the C-Series used until the launch of the Xe3P GPUs, which are likely the discrete variants. That said, Intel didn’t mention any discrete GPU during the ITT 2025, mainly focusing on integrated graphics.
Naming aside, Xe3 is set to double the amount of L2 cache while increasing the L1 by 33%. It also introduces variable register allocation, FP8 dequantization support, and an enhanced ray management unit with asynchronous ray tracing. In terms of performance, Xe3 is said to provide 50% higher performance than Lunar Lake’s Xe2 at the same power, and over 40% better performance per watt than Arrow Lake-H. Furthermore, Panther Lake CPUs house up to 12 of these GPU cores, which is 50% more than last gen, boosting performance even higher.
Intel’s marketing needs to get its act together, as worthwhile products tend to get lost in translation. Why won’t you capitalise on your new architecture hype to sell your brand-new products is beyond me, and Tom’s explanation isn’t, to me at least, satisfactory. In any case, Panther Lake with its Xe3 graphics shapes to be a great product, so keep an eye out for its launch.
