If the RAMpocalypse doesn't price them into oblivion, the next generation of hot handheld gaming PCs could well be Intel-powered
Although the AI-induced global memory crisis is currently doing its very best to wipe out the consumer PC market, that doesn't mean system vendors are giving up on releasing new products. In fact, we're just a month away from Computex, and you can be sure to see a whole raft of new desktops, laptops, and handheld gaming PCs. And in the case of the latter, the best ones could well have an Intel chip inside them.
That's if the latest PassMark benchmark result for the Intel Arc G3 Extreme is anything to go by, at least (via Wccftech). Never heard of that chip? Well, you've just joined a very large club, because it's not been officially announced yet, but essentially it's a Panther Lake processor that has a top-of-the-class graphics tile, but a retake-the-year compute tile.
More specifically, you're looking at a chip that has a 12 Xe core Arc B390 iGPU, which is a very capable little pixel pusher (though it really needs fast DRAM to make it shine). However, on the CPU-side of things, you're only getting two P-cores, eight E-cores, and four Low Power E-cores.
AMD's best APU for handheld gaming PCs, the Ryzen Z2 Extreme, also has a beefy iGPU—16 RDNA 3.5 compute units, with a boost clock of up to 2.7 GHz—and seems to have better CPU specs, on paper, than the Arc G3 Extreme. While its eight cores comprise three Zen 5 and five, lower-clocked Zen 5c, in terms of configuration, it supports up to 16 threads in total. Intel's chip is a little behind with 14.
However, the PassMark result suggests this isn't an issue, as the multithreaded score of 29,222 is 25% higher than the average score of the Ryzen Z2 Extreme. While the gap isn't as impressive for the single-thread score (4288 vs 3964, 8% higher), Intel's pocket Panther Lake processor is better overall in these tests than AMD's chip, despite being mostly E-core powered.
For a handheld gaming PC, though, what ultimately matters is the iGPU, and that's where the Arc G3 Extreme could be a real winner. We tested the Ryzen Z2 Extreme's gaming chops when we reviewed the Asus Xbox Ally X, and if you look at those results and compare them to the Arc B390 in an Asus Zenbook Duo, you'll see that Intel's chip is considerably faster.
However, it's completely unfair to compare a laptop to a handheld gaming device, as the power levels aren't the same, so we'll just have to wait a bit longer for Intel to do the right thing and launch the Arc G3 Extreme. Oh, and then continue to hang around, kicking stones, muttering to ourselves, until we get a handheld gaming PC with said processor.
If we do, I suspect that it will top the charts in two areas: the fastest gaming handheld and the most expensive gaming handheld. Intel's Panther Lake chips aren't exactly cheap, and the Arc B390 needs the most expensive LPDDR5x around to get the best from it. That combination, in the era of the RAMpocalypse, just means one thing: a sky-high price tag.
Will Arc G3 Extreme portable PCs be worth a huge sum of money? Only time will tell.