Intel might be lining up cheaper Panther Lake chips for gaming handhelds, rather than leaving the market to pricey flagships.
The Arc G3 series is Chipzilla’s most powerful SoC line-up for gaming handhelds. That does not mean Chipzilla is only fussing about flagship parts with shiny price tags attached.
Chipzilla has already launched several Panther Lake SKU line-ups, even if they were not built directly for handheld gaming. Now it appears similar variants are being prepared for handheld devices.
That is how the Arc G3 and G3 Extreme SoCs came about. They deliver a 14-core configuration paired with 10-core and 12-core Xe3 integrated graphics. Those graphics are known as Arc B370 and Arc B390, respectively. The chips are fairly pokey for gaming without a discrete GPU and have already turned up in new handheld designs.
According to @jaykihn0, Chipzilla is preparing another Panther Lake SKU aimed at gaming handhelds. It is not official, but the tipster’s track record suggests Chipzilla may be eyeing entry-level devices. The reported Panther Lake handheld variant uses a “4+0+4+4” configuration. That means four Performance cores, zero Efficient cores, four LP-E cores and four Xe3 GPU cores.
The setup looks similar to Panther Lake processors such as the Core Ultra 5 325, Core Ultra 5 335, Core Ultra 7 355 and Core Ultra 7 365. Instead of constantly chasing Strix Point and Strix Halo handhelds, Chipzilla may give the cheaper end of the market something new. That would make sense, since Arc G3 and G3 Extreme handhelds can easily cost more than $1,000.
Memory and storage prices remain the biggest culprits behind handheld sticker shock. Still, a new eight-core SKU could make sub-$1,000 or even sub-$800 gaming handhelds more realistic.
