Intel Charges Into AMD’s Handheld Stronghold With Purpose-Built Arc G3 Chips, Packing Upto 14 Cores & 12-Core Xe3 GPU

Intel has finally unveiled its brand new SoCs for gaming handhelds called the Arc G3 Extreme & Arc G3, based on the Panther Lake design.

Intel Plans To Disrupt AMD's Gaming Handheld Dominance With Its New Arc G3 Chips, Featuring Strong Capabilities

The gaming handheld space has seen a major surge over the past few years. For the longest time, AMD has been very competitive in the market, and while Intel did have a few products that showed the kind of performance, efficiency, and features to compete well, there weren't that many options to select from, as the market was overflowing with Ryzen options.

Now, Intel is going all-in on the gaming handheld segment, not just rebranding a chip made for power-efficient laptops, but introducing a purpose-built handheld SoC called the Arc G series. The first of these SoCs is called the Arc G3 series, and this is essentially the same architecture as Panther Lake but with a lot of optimizations for handheld designs. The company promises more ecosystem partnerships, & there are the following highlights to expect from these chips:

• PC-Class performance and flexibility
• Smooth, immersive gameplay with XeSS 3
• Seamless gaming experiences on the go
• Extended playtime with Endurance Gaming

Intel's Arc G3 handheld SoCs include two chips, the Arc G3 Extreme and the Arc G3. So let's dive into the specifications of these products.

Intel Arc G3 Extreme - Top-Tier For Handhelds

On the high end, Intel has the Arc G3 Extreme, which features a total of 14 CPU (2 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores, 4 LP-E Cores) cores, a max P-Core clock of 4.7 GHz, and 12 MB of L3 cache. The chip packs a 46 TOPS NPU and has some solid IO such as 12 PCIe lanes (x8 Gen4 / x4 Gen5), dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, Wi-Fi 7 R2 & Dual Bluetooth 6.0 wireless networking, and supports LPDDR5X-8533 memory with capacities of up to 96 GB.

On the GPU side, the Arc G3 Extreme features the top 12Xe3 configuration known as the Arc B390, which operates at up to 2.3 GHz clock speeds. The chip features a configurable TDP between 8W and up to 35 Watts.

Intel Arc G3 - Cost/Power Optimized For All

The second chip is the Arc G3, which features the same CPU configuration with a 100 MHz lower clock speed, the same IO specs, and a TDP of 8-30W. The main difference is the iGPU, which has been moved one step down to the Arc B370, a 10Xe3 core configuration that operates at up to 2200 MHz. This chip should retain very similar performance capabilities, and we can expect a lower price point & higher SoC-level efficiency.

• Immersive gaming with XBOX mode, a controller-optimized, console-inspired, full-screen experience for Windows 11 PCs, which unifies your library of installed games.
• Faster game launches with Intel Precompiled Shaders, which download prebuilt shader files from the Intel cloud for select titles.
• Right-sized compute, with 2 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores, and 4 LP E-Cores manufactured on the Intel 18A process node technology, the most advanced logic node developed and manufactured in the United States.
• Advanced connectivity, including integrated Intel Wi-Fi 7 R2, dual Bluetooth 6, and Intel Thunderbolt 4 with support for Thunderbolt Share, gives users up to 40 Gbps bandwidth for high-speed storage, peripherals, and rapid transfer of large game libraries.

All of the Arc Xe3 architectural and feature goodness should be available on these chips, such as XeSS 3, Multi-Frame Generation, Day-0 Game On drivers, Precompiled Shader Distribution from Intel, and Xbox Mode compatibility.

The first Intel partners will be showcasing their designs at Computex 2026, and the first handhelds based on the Arc G3 SoCs, such as the Acer Predator Atlas 8, MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, and OneXPlayer 3, are expected to roll out in June this year.

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