Intel’s Arc graphics solutions initially had a rough start to life on the Linux side of things, but it seems as though the tide is changing. Phoronix recently tested the new Panther Lake Intel Arc B390 iGPU in the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H, comparing the new iGPU to the venerable Radeon 890M in the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, and, surprisingly, Intel’s iGPU consistently outpaces the Radeon iGPU, which isn’t a surprise if you’ve been keeping track of early benchmarks on Windows. The publication tested the new Xe3 integrated graphics in an MSI Prestige 14 running the latest Mesa 26.0 drivers on Linux Kernel version 6.19 on Ubuntu 26.04.
When it comes to gaming, the only games in which the Xe3 iGPU was bested by the AMD competition were Counterstrike 2, running at 1920×1200, and Quake II RTX. In every other game, the Intel Arc B390 beat both the AMD competition and the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and Core Ultra 7 258V significantly. Depending on the game and in-game settings, the Arc B390 was anywhere between 15% and upwards of 50%. Hitman 3 was a particularly impressive outlier, with the B390 managing to get over 50% more FPS than the nearest competitor and 64% more FPS than the Radeon 890M at 1920×1200 and low settings, with similar gains at medium quality settings, and a slightly less impressive performance improvement when bumping up to ultra settings.
A similar story played out when it came to gaming benchmarks, with the Arc B390 coming out on top in 3DMark Wild Life Extreme—scoring 20% better than the Radeon 890M—and 3DMark Solar Bay, which was a closer victory, and GravityMark, where the Arc B390 once again dominated in OpenGL, Vulkan, and Vulkan Ray Tracing benchmarks. The Arc iGPU also performed admirably in Unigine Superposition, Valley, and Heaven, where it was never less than 30% ahead of the competition. Curiously, the AMD Radeon 890M still traded blows with the Arc B390 in terms of efficiency, even if raw performance wasn’t quite there for Team Red.