General Performance

Cinebench R23

PCMark 10

The CPU part of the G3 Extreme is a beast when it comes to multithreaded workloads. Its Panther Lake CPU, made up of Cougar Cove P-cores and Darkmont E-cores and LP E-cores, is very capable for general work in case you want to use the Claw 8 EX for more than gaming.

With regard to gaming, while single-core performance isn't the fastest we've seen, it's still more than enough to keep pace with the B390 GPU. Two P-cores are sufficient for modern games. The two P-cores bear the brunt of the workload, with four E-cores supporting them.

Note that below 14 W, the G3 Extreme and G3 SoCs use a feature called Intelligent Bias Control that parks the two power-hungry P-cores and relies only on the E-cores and LP E-cores for CPU-related tasks in games and other software. We consider this the right move by Intel because it gives the B390 more breathing room when power is limited, which can boost gaming performance in low-power situations by more than 20% in some cases, according to Intel.