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Intel Portables (Apple)

Intel's New Core Series 3 Is Its Answer To the MacBook Neo (pcworld.com) 152

Posted by BeauHD from the budget-friendly dept.
Intel has launched a new budget-focused Core Series 3 processor line for lower-cost laptops -- "Intel's response to budget CPUs that are appearing in laptops like the Apple MacBook Neo," writes PCWorld's Mark Hachman. From the report: Intel unexpectedly launched the Core Series 3, based on its excellent "Panther Lake" (Core Ultra Series 3) architecture and 18A manufacturing, for devices for home consumers and small business on Thursday. Intel announced that a number of partners will launch laptops based upon the chip, including Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, and others. Although those laptops will be available beginning today, a number of them will begin shipping later this year, the partners said.

All of it -- from the specifications down to the messaging -- feels extremely aimed at trimming the fat and delivering to users just what they'll want. Intel's new Core Series 3 family just includes two "Cougar Cove" performance cores and four low-power efficiency "Darkmont" cores, with two Xe graphics cores on top of it. Intel isn't really worrying about AI, with an NPU capable of just 17 TOPS, though the company claims the CPU, NPU, and GPU combined reach 40 TOPS of performance. Yes, laptops will use pricey DDR5 memory, but at the lower end: just DDR5-6400 speeds. Support for three external displays will be included, though, maximizing multiple screens for maximum productivity. Intel used the term "all day battery life" without elaboration.

[...] Intel Core Series 3 delivers up to 47 percent better single-thread performance, up to 41 percent better multi thread performance, and up to 2.8x better GPU AI performance, Intel said. Compared against Intel's older Core 7 150U, Intel is saying that the new chip will outperform it by 2.1 times in content-creation and 2.7 times the AI performance. [...] We still don't know what Intel will charge for the chip, nor do we know what you'll be able to buy a Core Series 3 laptop for.

Intel's New Core Series 3 Is Its Answer To the MacBook Neo More | Reply

Intel's New Core Series 3 Is Its Answer To the MacBook Neo

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  • The underlying issue (Score:5, Informative)

    by MarkHughes4096 ( 6345560 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @03:34AM (#66098150)
    And the reason I bought a Neo was that is isn't Windows, So unless this Intel chip is in laptops that run some other OS it isn't solving the problem. I'm just so tired of waiting for Windows to get better.

    • Re:The underlying issue (Score:5, Informative)

      by mustafap ( 452510 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @05:10AM (#66098230) Homepage

      > I'm just so tired of waiting for Windows to get better.

      Sigh. And as we all know, it's just accelerating at getting worse. I wish I could be just Linux.

      • Do you need high performance or only compatibility? If the latter, you can at least stuff Windows into a VM for your own protection. Only the graphics performance is poor, but the graphics functionality is also poor.

      • > I'm just so tired of waiting for Windows to get better.

        Sigh. And as we all know, it's just accelerating at getting worse. I wish I could be just Linux.

        That’s because you’re an idiot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by svx ( 764251 )
      Windows to get better? It peaked with Windows XP SP3 and maybe Windows 7, but went downhill from there. Windows 11 is worse than Vista.

    • Re:The underlying issue (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Teun ( 17872 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @07:15AM (#66098298)
      I would be dead before Microsoft fixes Windows so I run Linux on this Thinkpad X1.
      The company I consult for is a Microsoft shop but Office 365 works fine in the Brave browser.
      What we need is an authority splitting Microsoft in the OS and applications.

    • Re:The underlying issue (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MarkHughes4096 ( 6345560 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @08:26AM (#66098352)
      Due to my experience with the Neo I have just ordered a 15" Air, Should be here tomorrow.

      • Due to my experience with the Neo I have just ordered a 15" Air, Should be here tomorrow.

        I recently purchased a used 2020 MacBook Air M1 with 8GB RAM for testing purposes. It's pretty much the lowest end Apple Silicon based Mac ever made.

        The 2026 Mac Neo A18 is pretty much equivalent in terms of performance. One may argue the Neo is the new lowest end Apple Silicon based Mac ever made given its lower resolution screen, lack of thunderbolt connectors, etc.

        That said, the Mac Neo A18 fulfills its niche perfectly. It will be extremely attractive to K-12 school districts. It will server their

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      They will almost certainly be used in chromebooks, and no reason they can't run linux..
      But i doubt they will be able to match the performance/watt of apple's offerings.

      • Like Apple, both Microsoft and Google started moving their platforms to Arm. Except that Google would have more success w/ it, since Android already runs on Arm, and they are looking at AluminiumOS replacing ChromeOS, which would make this transition even more natural. So vendors building Chromebooks have choices like Qualcomm, MediaTek and at some point, maybe even AMD and Nvidia

        The only residual reason now to buy x86 based CPUs is legacy Wintel software. If one uses macOS, Apple has already moved to

    • Not to mention build quality of the laptop's hardware. The Neo feels like a premium laptop. Very few Windows laptops feel that nice, and none of them remotely close to the Neo's price point feel anywhere close to that nice.

    • That's a part of it anything anyone makes to "compete with the Neo" has to take into account.

      To me though, I think what's impressive about the Neo is the entire package works together to minimize the impact of the cheaper parts of the system. So, the Neo combines memory within the same package to speed up what would otherwise be a mediocre CPU. The hard limits on how much memory you can do that with are made up for by having an operating system (and, these days, more important) web browser that doesn't need

    • And the reason I bought a Neo was that is isn't Windows, So unless this Intel chip is in laptops that run some other OS it isn't solving the problem.

      I'm just so tired of waiting for Windows to get better.

      So is everyone else, apparently.

      Name another Computer with THIS ” Problem”. . .

      https://www.macrumors.com/2026... [macrumors.com]

      https://www.digitaltrends.com/... [digitaltrends.com]

      https://www.gizchina.com/apple... [gizchina.com]

      As for Reviews, here’s a few:

      https://www.tomsguide.com/comp... [tomsguide.com]

      https://www.macrumors.com/2026... [macrumors.com]

      https://www.techradar.com/comp... [techradar.com]

      https://www.goodhousekeeping.c... [goodhousekeeping.com]

      https://www.pcmag.com/opinions... [pcmag.com]

      https://www.slashgear.com/2147... [slashgear.com]

      So, Wintel; bring it on!

  • Neat! But it's gonna have a tough time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by T34L ( 10503334 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @04:00AM (#66098170)

    I feel like at the suddenly competitive entry level point that Macbook Neo reminded people of actually existing, the issue isn't the CPU or any other part of the hardware, it's that the poor Intel and AMD entry level CPUs have to somehow propel their little clowncar so very overloaded with bloatware/malware that comes from Microsoft and venerable "partners" named in the article.

    In 2026, you can get a wonderful experience on very affordable x86, complete with suspend that works, sane battery life and snappy responsibility... on Linux.

    I am currently straddling a Macbook Pro for work that feels like a computer that I actually want to use, and a powerful gAmInG RiG with Windows, booted occasionally, which has several times the compute and memory performance of the Macbook but regularly baffles me with how slow everything is, how often things inexplicably break (no sound output until reboot. no sound input until reboot. video playback gets stutter (both on Youtube and in local players) until reboot, monitor just blanks and NEVER UNBLANKS AGAIN). The only reason I haven't aggressively purged the windows away is that I want to mess with VR and that stack seems still a bit behind on Linux, so if Valve really pulls it together at the opportunity of Deckard, I'll be working on Mac, playing games on Linux, and cheering on Redmond getting burned down to the ground by the growing angry mob that used to be their userbase.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ddtmm ( 549094 )
      Your system sounds very much like software issues and I would say you are a prime candidate for a reinstall. Who puts up with those issues on an ongoing basis?

      • And on that note, why should the user be expected to occasionally just have to reinstall the entire OS? Is that a thing with any operating system besides Windows?

      • Your system sounds very much like software issues and I would say you are a prime candidate for a reinstall. Who puts up with those issues on an ongoing basis?

        Aren’t we PAST “Wipe and Reload” being the answer to EVERY Windows problem?

        Guess not!

  • It's not the processor, it's the whole package (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fewnorms ( 630720 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @05:33AM (#66098242)
    Good job Intel, but I don't think most people bought a Neo over a comparable Windows laptop just because of the processor. It's more the whole package (i.e.great build quality). Now if Intel stuffs their new Neo killer processor in a machine that looks and feels like a Neo in terms of overall hardware, then they might have a shot. But that's not up to them, but up to the hardware manufacturers themselves, and they'll find any excuse they can to make it as cheap as possible and thereby compromising on that same build quality. See: pretty much any cheap plastic Windows laptop out there.

    • Good job Intel, but I don't think most people bought a Neo over a comparable Windows laptop just because of the processor. It's more the whole package (i.e.great build quality). Now if Intel stuffs their new Neo killer processor in a machine that looks and feels like a Neo in terms of overall hardware, then they might have a shot.

      The thing is, in the long run I can't see this new processor having any legs at Intel. Intel's bread and butter is high-end, high-margin products. Working on those chips is what

    • I found this review [arstechnica.com] of the Neo illuminating. His take is that the market for cheap Windows laptops is a mess. There are some decent computers, but they're mixed in with a whole lot of garbage. The fatal flaws are often things you can't learn from a spec sheet, like that the screen looks terrible or the keyboard is awful. Even if you find a usable one you can't recommend it to anyone else, because all the models churn constantly. By the time they get to the store, there's a good chance it will already h

  • Intel Celeron Core 3 (Score:3)

    by ZiggyZiggyZig ( 5490070 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @06:18AM (#66098258)

    Like this "budget CPU" thing rolled out so well last time, Intel...

    • This time, they've muddied the branding so much that people won't be able to keep track.

      They went from Core i3 in the old lineup to a new linueup of Core Ultra 3 and then introduced a budget Core 3.

  • The OSbesity Epidemic. (Score:3)

    by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @06:28AM (#66098262)

    All of it -- from the specifications down to the messaging -- feels extremely aimed at trimming the fat and delivering to users just what they'll want.

    Really? I must have missed the part where they said it was running Linux. Trimming fat? Telemetry and AI are the obese resource twins “running” around in their OS “solution”, which Intel fails to grasp is one of the main underlying reasons people choose Apple every time now.

    Intel launches the new Core Series 3, which at one time might have been called a Celeron chip.

    And just when I thought the story couldn’t get any more hilarious from a marketing perspective, the new hotness comes strutting in wearing an old scent; Smelleron Cheese.

    Some of us remember being forced to build PCs on a Top Ramen budget. Celerons were quietly in the IT Nerd category of CPUs for Thee, but not for Me.

    Price remains a big question..

    Yeah, that tends to happen when you realize 32GB of blazing fast RAM priced at cats-singing-opera rates, might not be enough.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      There's one exceptional gem in the Celeron lineup: the 300A.

      You could trivially overclock it about 33% with a FSB kick up from 66MHz to 100MHz, and the CPU had L2 cache (which as you probably recall, basically didn't exist otherwise on Celeron).

      They were all just under binned chips, and that 33% was the baseline conservative overclock. It wasn't uncommon to push them past 500MHz with a good cooler. It was the era of peltiers and water blocks starting to take off.

    • All of it -- from the specifications down to the messaging -- feels extremely aimed at trimming the fat and delivering to users just what they'll want.

      Really? I must have missed the part where they said it was running Linux. Trimming fat? Telemetry and AI are the obese resource twins “running” around in their OS “solution”, which Intel fails to grasp is one of the main underlying reasons people choose Apple every time now.

      Intel launches the new Core Series 3, which at one time might have been called a Celeron chip.

      And just when I thought the story couldn’t get any more hilarious from a marketing perspective, the new hotness comes strutting in wearing an old scent; Smelleron Cheese.

      Some of us remember being forced to build PCs on a Top Ramen budget. Celerons were quietly in the IT Nerd category of CPUs for Thee, but not for Me.

      Price remains a big question..

      Yeah, that tends to happen when you realize 32GB of blazing fast RAM priced at cats-singing-opera rates, might not be enough.

      How many Windows or Linux Laptops are having this problem:

      https://www.digitaltrends.com/... [digitaltrends.com]

  • Intel: Our new radiator is the answer to their car (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nikkipolya ( 718326 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @06:28AM (#66098264)

    How can a CPU, which is one of the many parts in a laptop, be an answer to the whole laptop + OS?

    Intel has been out gunned, out maneuvered. Apple used to price their stuff for a premium. I think the stuff that really makes a big difference for the neo is the OS, not the CPU. With Apple deciding to sell their wares in the mass market category, the x86 market is slated to flush both the shit and the ass (Windows) in one go. And there is hardly any shit Intel or AMD can do about it. Their fortunes are tightly coupled with Microsoft Windows. Which can only get crapier release after release.

    • And there is hardly any shit Intel or AMD can do about it. Their fortunes are tightly coupled with Microsoft Windows. Which can only get crapier release after release.

      Hell of a marriage, isn’t it.

      Just imagine Intel finally getting that divorce, and getting a good hard fuck from an OS that weighs less than 500 pounds. They wouldn’t even know how to behave knowing that hotness was out there the WHOLE time.

    • Well it's an answer; no one said the answer is correct.

      • Yea, I can't think of a time where throwing less hardware at Windows was an "answer" to any question worth asking.

    • And there is hardly any shit Intel or AMD can do about it. Their fortunes are tightly coupled with Microsoft Windows.

      This isn't even vaguely close to the truth for AMD, whose Linux drivers are far superior to their Windows drivers, and who is now leading sales in the datacenter. AMD is going to do fine. It's Intel with their shitty Linux drivers that has to be concerned. This is a bit ironic because throughout all history it's been AMD with the shitty drivers and Intel with working ones, so it's just another example of how Intel has fallen.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        Think this was more about the business side than the execution side.

        They can be just fine if Linux desktop is seen as 'acceptable' in the mass market. The operative word being 'seen', not if it should be acceptable, but if people believe it to be.

        It's a tall order to shift the perception of the mass market.

        If Microsoft screws over their users, and now 'just enough laptop' can be bought from Apple within a price range long deemed 'adequate', then AMD/Intel essentially *need* people to decide they *love* lin

        • Apple is its own thing. It is not fully inconceivable that the feds (and therefore everyone else) would switch to MacOS if Windows became [even more] unsupportable, but I doubt Microsoft can provide Office at even the sad level it achieves on Windows and it would take Apple time to ramp up supply.

          Linux is an easy sell unless people are hooked on some application or game that doesn't run on it, then it's hard. The interface is familiar enough now (especially with KDE, but there are some other basically credi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      If AMD and Intel were smart, they'd get together with IBM and figure out how to get out of that abusive relationship.

      It would likely involve a skunkworks effort to "fix" open source Linux to be a useable desktop. Close it up a bit and then start ripping things out from the top to bottom, then release it as their own thing. LLMs make this much more tenable now than it would've in years past. No reason they couldn't keep the license the same, either.

      In a world where "rewrite libreoffice to not be shit" is a t

      • I don't see why this couldn't be done. It just requires the intention, these companies have the money to do it.

        They have to also have the balls to have a winning formula, like put the nerds with successful histories in charge and let them make decisions and spend money. Instead they want to design everything by committee, and everyone wants to have the biggest piece of the pie. The more companies you combine the less successful it is likely to be. See: Every fucking project like this ever between any of the principals you named here.

      • IBM? Just ask them how all their historical projects and acquisitions - OS/2, Lotus, PowerPC,.... all ended up

  • Isn't touting its AI performance contrary to the phrase "giving the users only what they want?"

  • Windows still needs more RAM just to function (Score:4, Insightful)

    by djb ( 19374 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @07:32AM (#66098316) Homepage
    Still going to need 16gb just to run Windows and these days that is a major competitive disadvantage.

    • I do have a system I run Linux on successfully with only 8GB, but all I run on it is a browser, and sometimes CHIRP.

      My desktop has 64GB and it is what I want a desktop to be, I can run lots of things without swap.

      My MiniPC has 32GB and it is adequate. But I can't just run whatever I want. I don't use swap because I use SSDs and I don't want to reduce their lifespans if my system goes nuts.

      16GB is a reasonable minimum for someone who wants to do more than run a browser.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by djb ( 19374 )

        I do have a system I run Linux on successfully with only 8GB, but all I run on it is a browser, and sometimes CHIRP.

        MacOS just needs less RAM than other OSes. Apple have spent a couple of decades optimising memory allocation that is just ahead of everyone else.

        • I believe the OS uses less RAM, but that doesn't change application memory use overall. If applications make inefficient use of resources, there's only so much the OS can do to improve that. It's not like iOS where it's on lock, developers are free to do things not-the-Apple-way.

          • I believe the OS uses less RAM, but that doesn't change application memory use overall. If applications make inefficient use of resources, there's only so much the OS can do to improve that. It's not like iOS where it's on lock, developers are free to do things not-the-Apple-way.

            Wrong.

            The OS is designed from the ground-up to maximize ALL memory usage.

            I ran my 4 GB 2012 MBP for nearly a decade before putting 16 GB in it; and that was just because I was afraid of the RAM becoming hard to get/expensive. Not because I actually felt the need.

  • Yes, price and solid build helps make it attractive, but the key reason people are buying these is to flee from Windows.

  • The chip had nothing to do with it. (Score:3)

    by jdawgnoonan ( 718294 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @07:50AM (#66098330)
    The Mac Neo's success is not about the chip in it, it is because the competition at the same price have terrible screens bad trackpads, flimsy keyboard, and then a crap-ware filled OS that is sluggish on even the best hardware. The sluggishness of Windows is not due to features but instead due to low quality.

    • Ah yes, we must have read the same review a couple days ago....."Neo vs three budget PCs" or something like that. It wasn't the absolute best on performance, but it was in the neighborhood (this is a handheld device CPU that failed its core check after all). The build quality of the Mac versus the others was what really stood out.

  • Problem is you're stuck with Windows 11 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @08:39AM (#66098370)
    And Windows 11 is dog slow. So you're going to have a really hard time matching the performance of the MacBook neo because Windows 11 really needs a minimum of 16 gigs of RAM and to be honest you really want 32 gigs and even then you need a stupidly fast processor to deal with all the Cruft and slowness.

    But with all that ram that you need just for your operating system to be barely functional and with ram being so stupidly expensive you're just up a creek without a paddle.

    This is not to say the MacBook couldn't use another 8 gigs of RAM but it's at least going to be functional with that much memory. Windows 11 will technically boot with 8 gigs of RAM but the experience would be something like running Windows XP with 64 MB. You can do it but it would be so painful you wouldn't want to.

    But hey at least you're operating system constantly spies on you and uses every single movement you make to train an AI with the hopes of using it to replace you at your job leaving you homeless and destitute.
  • Say what you want about Windows 98 and Internet Explorer but it worked on Celerons with 64MB of RAM.

  • It could make BLTs and walk your dog. (Score:3)

    by jpellino ( 202698 ) on Friday April 17, 2026 @09:00AM (#66098402)

    It still runs Windows.
    Windows users are not asking for a slightly cheaper machine.
    They are asking for Windows to get better.

  • How the hell can this article start with the premise that this is a "Neo killer" and contain the sentence, "We still don't know what Intel will charge for the chip, nor do we know what you'll be able to buy a Core Series 3 laptop for."

    "Intel releases chip to compete with $599 Neo, but who the fuck knows what it will cost" is not serious journalism.

  • Posting since it was only in the footnotes.

    15W might be good for use cases where n1x0 are a bit slow.

    I'd consider a mini pc with one of these for kiosk-type applications. I have an n100 platform that gets maxed out with about 8 4K streams running. Would be nice to bump those up to 12 streams without much more power.

    The iGPU code for ffmpeg is pretty good.

    Hopefully these move beyond laptops later in the year.

  • A cpu is not the answer to a computer system. The cpu is just one factor; the software is a huge part of the whole system. Having an efficient and performant cpu only matters if system software isn't a pile of crap.

  • Is that the NPU doesn't have enough TOPS for Copilot local features... And nobody really cares Microsoft is secretly fine with it, because the internal backlash to Copilot is growing. We have heard public rumblings about the Windows 11 backslide and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Too bad upper management is out to lunch and too high on AI slop.

    I's easy to make Windows 11 suck less. Most of it is just undoing crap and a reasonable recommitment to actual native applications.

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