- The Intel’s Panther Lake range will not return to consumers before the first quarter of 2026, according to a disciplined slide
- This comes after the full launch expected at the end of 2025, but it is only for the early activation program
- Rumors suggest that the delay is due to the Intel 18A production process
Intel Lunar Lake Core Lake Core processors are already there, present on powerful laptops (such as the MSI Prestige Evo AI +range) and laptops (including MSI Claw 8 AI +). Now it’s time to expect the Panther Lake range from Team Blue – but it might not happen as soon as promised initially.
As Videocardz reported, a disclosure of disclosure of a special event in China apparently revealed that Panther Lake’s processors will not be launched before the first quarter of 2026, while its EEP (early activation program) will start this year in preparation later. This is contrary to the previous previous confirmation by Michelle Holthaus of the launch and availability of the range in the second half of 2025, indicating a delay. In the end, this means that consumers may have to wait until 2026 to get their hands on Intel Panther products on the lake.
The reasons for the delay come from difficulties in managing the 18A manufacturing process of the Blue team in terms of the original production calendar. We do not know exactly why this delay is in place, but if the reverse is large enough, it could have an impact on Intel placement on the market (especially against AMD).
We know that AMD always has its Ryzen AI 400 processors which will be announced, and we still do not know if it will be launched roughly at the same time as Lake Panther of Intel.
It should also be noted that the APUs of the Ryzen AI 300 series from Team Red have already made huge jumps in power of treatment, in particular the Ryzen AI 395+ Max – so if its new range arrives in the first quarter 2026, it will be interesting to see how it is just against the chips of Lake Panther using the XE3 architecture.
What does this mean for portable game PCs?
With the Core Ultra 7 258V processor of Intel, we saw the new MSI CLAW 8 AI + (the same chip is also used in the XPS 13 laptop of Dell), the wonders to provide huge improvements in the games – in particular compared to the previous Claw A1M MSI. Spoiler: It was not good.
With the Panther Lake processors now on the horizon (a little distant), I hope that we can get even stronger game ultrabooks and portable play PCs depending on these new fleas. Intel technical marketing vice-president Robert Hallock confirmed that the Blue team was planned to support pocket computers (as reported by laptop) and this could work perfectly for competition.
Ryzen Z2 Extreme of AMD is planned for “ early 2025 ” as part of the Ryzen family AI 300 Series – it will be used for pocket computers like the Lenovo Legion Go 2 (always a prototype), but it is still not clear when it is launched. It also seems that it competes with the ultra 7 258V basic processor, which could end up being a good indication of how Team Red and Team Blue to come could occur against each other.
I hope the two alignments offer drastic jumps in power for pocket computers at all levels, placing the portable game more under the spotlights where it belongs – let’s just hope that these delays do not make a long wait …
