Intel Arc B390 Graphics Performance On Linux With Panther Lake
Last week when first receiving the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Evo I was very confused over the out-of-the-box Linux performance... I was quite excited for the Arc B390 graphics since the Arizona Tech Tour yet finding the same performance level as the Core Ultra 7 258V in Linux gaming tests like Counter-Strike 2 was so disappointing. Eventually the confirmation arrived about the default balanced mode having up to a 15 Watt PL1 reduction under Linux compared to the default Windows balanced behavior. So once pushing the Core Ultra X7 358H in the performance mode to rectify that, indeed there's some nice generational gains and competitiveness to the Radeon 890M with Strix Point. In the case of Counter-Strike 2 at 1920 x 1200, the Intel Xe3 Arc Graphics / B390 was matching the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 performance -- at its balanced mode.
This did come with an increase in power consumption with the Core Ultra X7 358H seeing around a 24 Watt average and 43 Watt peak to the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 at 22 Watt average or a 33 Watt peak. On a performance-per-Watt basis, the default TDP-reduced "balanced" mode of the Core Ultra X7 358H was delivering the best performance-per-Watt otherwise it's the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and then the Core Ultra X7 358H with its bumped up power limits.
The Intel Arc B390 graphics for Cyberpunk 2077 at low quality settings and running on Linux via Steam Play just squeezed past the AMD Radeon 890M Graphics with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. Again, sadly no AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" benchmarks due to the HP review sample needing to be returned and thus unable to provide up-to-date numbers. The Panther Lake performance-per-Watt was competitive with the AMD Strix Point laptop in this testing.
At 1920 x 1200 high and ultra quality settings Cyberpunk 2077 isn't too playable on Linux with the integrated graphics tested, but here's the performance and perf-per-Watt breakdown for those interested.