GoKawiilIntel has been working on its Wildcat Lake family of budget CPUs for a while now; we've had leaks since at least late 2024 teasing a proper next-gen successor to Twin Lake. The launch of Panther Lake has recently reignited the Wildcat Lake rumor mill. As such, leaker @harukaze5719 has just spotted a new Geekbench listing for an Intel "Core 3 304," and it's quite impressive for its class.
The Core 3 304 scored 2,472 points in the single-core test and 6,708 points in the multi-core test — both of those are huge improvements over its predecessor, the Twin Lake-based N355. That chip isn't on Geekbench's processor benchmarks list, but you can search for it manually to find single-core scores averaging around 1,100 to 1,200 points. That means the Core 3 304 is already doubling that.
Moreover, the single-core numbers match AMD's Ryzen AI 9 365 and Intel's own Core Ultra 7 255H, both of which are more power-hungry chips aimed at high-end laptops. The Core 3 304 is, in fact, as powerful as the desktop Core i5-12600K from a few years ago, at least in Geekbench. On the other hand, the N355 scores around 4,500 multi-core points on average, so the Core 3 304 is roughly 50% faster than its predecessor in that department, too.
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(Image credit: Future)
As for the specs of the CPU, we're looking at a six-core (2P + 4LPE) config, which is the only one Wildcat Lake has, but the Geekbench listing is reporting 1P + 4LPE across the two clusters, meaning one of the performance cores is disabled. It's an early engineering sample after all, so take all these numbers with a grain of salt; with an extra P-core in the mix, the thermal demands will change the performance equation.
Speaking of which, these Wildcat Lake processors are aimed at the ultra-budget market where efficiency is key. Think Chromebooks, mini-PCs, NAS, etc. For years, Intel has stayed on its Alder Lake platform (Twin Lake is just a refresh) for this category, so they've only had Gracemont E-cores for the past two generations. Wildcat Lake is expected to be the first to introduce Cougar Cove P-cores and pair them with Darkmont Low Power E-cores to provide a significant performance bump.
(Image credit: Future)
That performance bump will come with power demands, however, as Wildcat Lake is apparently rated for only 15W, whereas Alder Lake-N and Twin Lake were between 9-15W. The TDP is what separates these bottom-tier Core Ultra 300 series chips — the Core 3 310 and Core 5 320 that were leaked a few days ago, too — as they seem to have identical specs to the "Ultra" branded Core Ultra 5 322 and 332 CPUs.
The Geekbench listing for the Core 3 304 confirmed its base frequency is 1.5 GHz, and it can boost up to 4.3 GHz, which is just 100 MHz lower than the lowest-end Core Ultra 5 SKU in Panther Lake. We don't see it on the Geekbench page, but we know that Wildcat Lake is expected to feature 2 Xe3 cores, which means basic integrated graphics support but still a huge leap over "Intel UHD" graphics in prior generations.
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