Intel's Third Generation Ultra Flagship Crushes Gaming: Meet the Arc B390 That Runs Battlefield at 150 FPS

The game-changer is finally here. At CES 2026, Intel just dropped the Core Ultra Series 3 powered by its breakthrough 18A process—and the integrated Arc B390 graphics card inside is absolutely rewriting the ultrabook playbook.

Performance That Speaks Louder Than Specs

Let’s cut to the chase: on Battlefield with Ultra settings, the new Arc B390 hits 150 FPS average (nearly 200 FPS in some scenes) through XeSS 3’s Multi-Frame Generation technology. For context, that’s a 77% gaming performance jump compared to the previous generation Arc 140V, and Intel claims it outperforms AMD’s equivalent by 70% on average—sometimes doubling the frame rate in specific titles.

The secret? The 12 Xe GPU cores, 12 ray tracing units, and 96 XMX AI accelerators working in tandem. With XeSS 3’s frame interpolation trick (generating 3 extra frames for every 1 rendered frame), what used to be a slideshow on thin-and-light laptops is now genuinely playable.

The Processor That Finally Makes Sense for Ultrabooks

Under the hood, the Core Ultra X9 388H brings 16 CPU cores and 12 GPU cores to the table, with up to 50 TOPS NPU compute. But here’s what actually matters: the new energy-efficient core design achieves a 60% CPU performance uplift versus Series 2 while dropping power consumption to just one-third for 4K streaming. Translation: battery life could finally stretch from hours into days.

The 18A process isn’t just marketing speak either. Compared to Intel’s previous node, transistor density and power efficiency both got meaningful bumps, thanks to RibbonFET and PowerVia tech innovations.

Gaming Handhelds Are Coming (Yes, Windows Ones)

Intel wasn’t shy about its ambitions. The company announced it’s partnering with manufacturers to launch x86-based gaming handhelds this year—and yes, they’re running Windows kernels. If the new Series 3’s efficiency gains can finally solve the standby battery drain that’s plagued Windows portables, this could be the year Steam’s competition gets real.

What This Means: Third Generation Thinking for PC Hardware

This is Intel’s vision for the third generation of computer architecture in the ultrabook era: brute-force GPU performance married to aggressive efficiency optimization. The 200+ partner configurations already validated during CES prove the market is ready. Consumer laptops equipped with Series 3 processors hit shelves starting January 6, with a steady rollout throughout 2026.

The memory price spike at year-end 2025 took the wind out of the PC sector’s sails, but Panther Lake just handed it back.