Thursday, October 30th 2025
Leaked Intel Core Ultra X7 358H and Ultra 5 338H Cinebench R23 Scores Reveal Concerning CPU Performance
Intel's upcoming Panther Lake laptop CPU configurations previously leaked, revealing a line-up ranging from the modest Core Ultra 3 320U, with 2 P-Cores and 4 LPE-Cores to the notably higher-end Core Ultra X9 388H, featuring 4 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores, and 4 LPE-Cores. Now, performance figures for the more mid-range Intel Core Ultra X7 358H and Core Ultra 5 338H have both been leaked, thanks to Laptopreview Club. According to the site, the Core Ultra X7 in question managed a Cinebench R23 score of around 20,000, while the Core Ultra 5 338H came in at around 16,000 points or 20% slower than the X7 variant—the site doesn't provide exact scores, only rounded figures, but it's some idea of what to expect in terms of CPU performance for the next-gen Intel CPU platform.
As previously discussed, Panther Lake appears to be focusing more on iGPU performance, with leaked benchmarks revealing RTX 3050-tier performance from the 12-core Xe3 iGPU solution, but this is the first indication of CPU performance for the new CPU generation. The leaker claims that the 358H will be around 10% slower than the 255H at the same power consumption, in this case 60-65 W, with Cinebench R23 scores for the 255H ranging from the low 17,000s to upwards of 22,000. It appears, thus, that Panther Lake may sacrifice some CPU performance in order to improve iGPU performance, although these are still early rumors, and things are subject to change ahead of launch. The idea that Intel would launch a new CPU that underperforms its old platform by such a margin seems unlikely. It's possible that these tests were on the lower side of average or a worst-case scenario, either of which would actually make the performance of the new CPUs reasonably impressive.
Sources:
Laptopreview Club, VideoCardz, Notebookcheck
As previously discussed, Panther Lake appears to be focusing more on iGPU performance, with leaked benchmarks revealing RTX 3050-tier performance from the 12-core Xe3 iGPU solution, but this is the first indication of CPU performance for the new CPU generation. The leaker claims that the 358H will be around 10% slower than the 255H at the same power consumption, in this case 60-65 W, with Cinebench R23 scores for the 255H ranging from the low 17,000s to upwards of 22,000. It appears, thus, that Panther Lake may sacrifice some CPU performance in order to improve iGPU performance, although these are still early rumors, and things are subject to change ahead of launch. The idea that Intel would launch a new CPU that underperforms its old platform by such a margin seems unlikely. It's possible that these tests were on the lower side of average or a worst-case scenario, either of which would actually make the performance of the new CPUs reasonably impressive.
12 Comments on Leaked Intel Core Ultra X7 358H and Ultra 5 338H Cinebench R23 Scores Reveal Concerning CPU Performance
The article also notes that the iGPU's Time Spy benchmarks are better than the RTX 2060.
I'd frankly trust Linux scheduler way more for this so having Intel's P/E cores mixed for laptop that's mostly for productivity it would probably by far work the best. Still wouldn't rely on it for gaming...
What is going on over there? It seems they have lost their way.
Its like being surprised that the 7950X3D is faster than the 9800X3D in Cinebench, or that the 13900K is still faster than the 14700K.The 255H is 6C/8e/2LPe and the 358H is rumored to be 4C/8e/4LPe so naturally it should still be able to perform better in multi-threaded workloads. This is only a single generation ahead of Alder Lake-H so I'm not expecting the 4C Panther Lake to suddenly be better than the 6C ADL-H CPU.
Those are made-up numbers. Whatever the numbers they'll also be affected by the manufacturing nodes, core design changes, tile changes, and LPE cores. New nodes typically struggle at higher power levels more than mature nodes. LPE cores aren't on the ring bus and I've heard Cinebench doesn't even use them on Arrow Lake. Darkmont and Cougar Cove are minor updates over Skymont and Lion Cove.