Intel makes a bid for handheld gaming PCs with new Arc G3 processors

Most of the Steam Deck imitators in the marketplace proper now use AMD silicon, particularly the Ryzen Z-series chips. These are the identical chips AMD makes for normal laptops, however with totally different energy settings higher suited to a compact handheld system. There are handhelds based mostly on Intel silicon (MSI’s Claw is the principle one), however Intel hasn’t but tried making silicon marketed particularly for that objective.

Today, the corporate is throwing its hat within the ring with two Intel Arc G-series processors, which is able to enable gaming handhelds to leverage the corporate’s genuinely fairly good Arc B-series built-in GPUs. Intel says that a number of Arc G-series handhelds will arrive “starting in June 2026, with broader availability throughout the year.” These methods will embrace a brand new MSI Claw mannequin, a Predator Atlas 8 from Acer, and a tool from OneXPlayer.

Intel usually makes use of its “Arc” branding for built-in and devoted GPUs, however on this case, the “Arc” model encompasses the whole chip, together with the CPU, GPU, NPU, and different elements.

The G-series chips are comparable in some ways to the Core Ultra Series 3 chips (codenamed Panther Lake) that Intel is presently delivery in high-end thin-and-light laptops. They use the identical CPU and GPU architectures and make use of Intel’s 18A manufacturing course of (amongst others). But they ship with a barely totally different mixture of CPU and GPU cores that doesn’t fairly match up with any of the Core Ultra processors.