Intel’s first handheld gaming chip is the Arc G3, and this Acer is utilizing it

Intel is barely within the handheld gaming PC area — however that may be about to alter. After the embarrassment that was the primary MSI Claw and the wonderful MSI Claw 8 AI Plus that adopted it, Intel introduced it might create customized handheld gaming chips. Today, it’s formally saying them because the Arc G3 and Arc G3 Extreme.

There’s rather a lot we don’t know concerning the chips, however Intel’s confirming right this moment that the Panther Lake variant comprises two fewer CPU cores than Intel’s Panther Lake laptop computer chips, however characteristic a full praise of Xe3 GPU cores to run video games. (They have 2 P-cores, 8 E-eores, and 4 LP E-cores, plus as much as 12 Xe3 graphics cores in complete.)

Intel will assist them with day-0 graphics driver updates as new video games come out, and precompiled shaders so that you don’t have as a lot stutter or load time in video games, it claims.

And, they’ll characteristic in at the very least three handhelds: the leaked MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus, the just-announced OneXPlayer 3 with removable controllers coming in June, and the just-announced Acer Predator Atlas 8 — which simply may wind up being Acer’s first handheld after the Acer Nitro Blaze 7, 8, and gigantic 11 went MIA.

The new Atlas 8 will are available at the very least two variants, one with an Intel Arc G3 Extreme and its Arc B390 graphics with 12 Xe3 GPU cores, and one with an Intel Arc G3 and the Arc B370 with 10 Xe3 cores as a substitute. Each is paired with 24GB of LPDDR5x RAM at 7467 MT/s, and cooled by “the first metal fan in a handheld” with 89 blades and a claimed 10 % airflow enhance over the competitors.

The handheld will weigh round 810 grams (1.79lb) with a big 80Wh battery, or 770 grams (1.7lb) with an above-average 60Wh battery — presumably the upper finish mannequin comes with the larger battery, like competing handhelds do.

The 8-inch display screen sounds above common, too. It’s a 1920 x 1200 IPS panel at 16:10 side ratio, in a local panorama association, with 500 nits of brightness and 48-120Hz variable refresh fee, lined in Gorilla Glass Victus with Corning’s DXC anti-glare coating with 100% sRGB and 77 % Adobe RGB protection.

You received’t discover magnetic Hall impact or TMR joysticks right here, simply carbon movie ones that may ultimately drift, nevertheless it does have Hall impact triggers with adjustable hair-trigger stops, two again buttons, and a fingerprint sensor within the energy button. It’ll include Windows 11 and Xbox Mode on as much as a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD of the full-length M.2 2280 selection. While we haven’t held it but, the spec sheet reveals it’s roughly an inch thick (28.5mm) at its thinnest level and over two inches thick (58.37mm) on the grips.

And being an Intel platform, it comes with two Thunderbolt 4 ports (supporting 65W USB-C charging) and Intel’s taste of Wi-Fi 7, in addition to a UHS-II microSD card reader and three.5mm headset jack.

The firm’s not speaking battery life or value simply but, nevertheless it’s planning to launch the Atlas 8 in October.

Retailer leaks counsel these handhelds might be fairly expensive. Unfortunately, that appears to be the way in which of all handhelds as of late: The Steam Deck received an enormous value hike simply yesterday.

Update, May twenty eighth: Added extra information from Intel and OneXPlayer, together with affirmation of two extra handhelds.