Leaker Clears The Air On Intel Core Ultra X Series, Models To Feature Full Xe3 iGPU

Just last week, information emerged from leakers alleging the existence of Intel’s new “Core Ultra X” branding with names like Core Ultra X9 388H and Core Ultra X7 368H/358H; longtime leaker Golden Pig Upgrade has revealed the nature of ‘X’ in these names has something to do with integrated GPU configurations.

Core Ultra X’s Nature

According to the leaker, only those with ‘X’ branding applied – such as the aforementioned model numbers – will feature full-fat Xe3-LPG integrated graphics with 12 Xe3-cores. Anything less will be stripped of the ‘X’ branding, such as the Core Ultra 5 338H, which reportedly features 10 Xe3-cores instead. As a matter of fact, the letter will be exclusive to Core Ultra X7 and Core Ultra X9 only.

Additionally, the numbering rule also saw some changes. In the case of Lunar Lake, the final digit (6 or 8) indicates the capacity of on-package memory – 6 means 16GB, and 8 means 32GB. Since the upcoming Panther Lake does away with this design, the new version of ‘8’ now purportedly points to iGPU capabilities instead, which in this case means a full-fat 12 Xe3-core iGPU onboard.

Currently, four SKUs are known: the Core Ultra X7 and X9s all feature 16 cores split into three clusters, including 4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 4 LPE-cores; as for the aforementioned Core Ultra 5 338H, it’ll feature four cores on all three clusters. This means the core count has slightly reduced in the case of Core Ultra 5, whereas the Core Ultra X9 and X7s saw changes on the core count in each clusters, having P-cores reduced from 6 to 4, and LPE-cores doubled from 2.

A further report from the same leaker also noted that the upcoming October 9 embargo will only address the architecture side of things, whereas specifications, performance and SKU information will have to wait until at least CES in January 2026. If you’re looking for new laptops featuring these silicon, there’s plenty more waiting for you to do.

Pokdepinion: I guess it’s worth paying attention to architectural changes since this will have implications on the performance with less P-cores this time around.