It’s Time for Intel to Show It Can Maintain Handheld PC Gaming Alive

Somebody must preserve cellular gaming alive by means of these darkish occasions. Thankfully, the corporate we least anticipated to make a graphics-centric chip, Intel, is now touting its Intel Arc G3 as the following large factor for handhelds.

The chipmaker has been hinting since CES 2026 that it’s engaged on an “Intel Core G3.” It seems that it’s truly releasing two processors: the Intel Arc G3 and the Intel Arc G3 Extreme. As the identify suggests, the “Extreme” model options the higher-end Arc B390 GPU, whereas the lower-end counterpart makes use of the Arc B370. Both chips are utilizing the identical 18A course of node as Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 chips, however this cellular model contains two P (efficiency) cores, eight E (effectivity) cores, and 4 extra low-power E cores. Compared to Intel’s laptop computer chips with twice the variety of P and E cores, the Arc G3 places the GPU entrance and heart.

What does all this “Arc” speak truly entail? Intel hasn’t but provided many particulars about its new chip, although it has extra time to get into the nitty-gritty throughout Computex 2026. As far as GPU capabilities go, the Arc B390 built-in graphics processing unit is similar because the one discovered within the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H and Core Ultra X9 388H. It contains 12 Xe3 GPU cores and 12 ray tracing acceleration cores. Don’t count on to max out your Forza Horizon 6 settings on a handheld any time quickly, although. The GPU helps a most TDP, or thermal design energy, of 80W. We doubt any lower-power handheld with a restricted battery will be capable of max out that TDP.

One of the primary handheld to assist this processor could also be Acer’s Predator Atlas 8. Without sufficient time with Intel-based handhelds, now we have no strategy to know simply how effectively they could carry out in comparison with techniques packing AMD’s present Ryzen Z2 Extreme. However, we do have a robust sense of how Intel’s iGPU runs 1080p video games on units just like the Dell XPS 16 and the Asus Zenbook Duo. Which is to say, it’s surprisingly able to hitting playable framerates, particularly when you can depend on Intel’s personal mix of XeSS upscaling.

OneXPlayer, an organization identified for boutique gaming handhelds, additionally confirmed off its upcoming Arc G3-based OneXPlayer 3 handheld Thursday. It options detachable controllers that connect to an 8.8-inch OLED show. The handheld additionally comes with a removable keyboard to show it right into a small-form PC on the go. OneXPlayer is planning to host an Indiegogo crowdfunding marketing campaign for its handheld someday in mid-to-late June, although we nonetheless don’t understand how a lot it could price.

The final handheld PC with Intel inside was the MSI Claw 8 AI+, but it surely was powered by a full-scale laptop computer chip, the Intel Core Ultra 258V. MSI’s 8-inch handheld truly carried out very effectively in Gizmodo’s personal exams, making us think about what would occur if Intel used its GPU structure in a tool devoted solely to 1080p gaming.

Aside from MSI’s Claw, Intel has let AMD run away with cellular gaming chips for the previous couple of years. But the long-promised Ryzen Z2 and Ryzen Z2 Extreme additionally didn’t ship the type of generational efficiency to justify handheld costs that shortly exceeded $1,000.

We nonetheless don’t understand how a lot handhelds with Intel’s new chips may cost a little. Laptops with Intel’s graphics-capable Panther Lake haven’t been low cost, and we don’t count on the Arc G3 platform to be any more cost effective.

This week, Valve spiked the worth of its Steam Deck OLED to just about $1,000 for the 1TB choice. That handheld sports activities a four-year-old customized AMD processor, one which performs worse than any of the more moderen Ryzen Z collection. We can hope we gained’t see $2,000 Arc G3 Extreme handhelds, but when the RAM pricing apocalypse continues, we will solely hope for the most effective and count on the worst.