A couple of months ago, Intel announced a couple of new chips for handheld gaming PCs, the Intel Arc G3 and G3 Extreme. It was certainly exciting to have something new on that front, given we've been seeing mostly the same silicon crammed inside such devices for a very long time. But at the time I warned that signs pointed towards yet more prohibitively expensive price tags. And now we're seeing Acer's pricing for its new Predator Atlas 8 handhelds, it's safe to say I was unfortunately right.

As spotted by KitGuru and confirmed by yours truly, pricing for these handhelds containing new Intel Panther Lake chips ranges, in UK pricing, from £1,000 to £1,500. The cheapest has a regular G3 chip, 16 GB of memory, and a 512 GB SSD. You can up the memory to 24 GB for another £100.

A G3 Extreme version with a 1 TB SSD and 24 GB of memory will be able to be nabbed for £1,300, and bumping that up to 32 GB of RAM will get you up to the top £1,500 price tag.

Converting those figures to dollars, that makes for a handheld that ranges from (roughly) $1,300 to $2,000. Though of course prices don't usually track exchange rates exactly.

Yep, that's pretty expensive. But it's also par for the course for handhelds now, it seems. Our Dave has actually just reviewed an MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM featuring a G3 Extreme chip and that, too is in this ballpark. It's $1,800, a figure I noted as being likely back in May, given currency conversions of EU/AUS retailer listings.

At Computex in June, MSI told us that it was targetting $1,500 for the Claw 8 EX AI+, but that also came with the caveat that was depending on market forces. And those market forces have not been kind, as evidenced by the subsequent price change. Again, not unexpected, but as with memory prices in general, just an unfortunate reality of the industry right now.

To be clear though, the G3 Extreme chip is incredibly performant, with its 12 Xe cores helping the new Claw handheld handily beat others like the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X in the games we tested at 1080p. So it's not quite as bad as paying so much for a non-G3 Extreme handheld. And it's certainly not as expensive as, erm, some options we're seeing surface.

But it's still mighty expensive. When the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X launched we thought that was expensive at $1,000, and now we reckon it's the best handheld gaming PC on the market because all the rest are just so damn expensive. It's a shame, given the handheld market for a while was looking like a decent entry into PC gaming. Now the market is looking more like an ultra-niche luxury one.

Three years ago, AMD introduced a new type of CPU core for its Zen 4 microarchitecture. The idea behind them was to reduce the amount of die space taken up by a regular core, so that more of them could be packed into a chiplet. The compact design is now a staple part of the Zen family, but it turns out that Team Red has another one on the way for Zen 6.

As reported by Phoronix, a Linux kernel update has been submitted by AMD, with the notes in the kernel mailing list neatly explaining what the new code is for. "This series extends the x86 topology cpu_type classification to support a Low Power core type, in addition to the existing Performance and Efficiency types."

Now, it's worth noting that what AMD calls Performance and Efficiency isn't the same as Intel's terminology. In the case of the former, Performance core types are just your regular Zen blocks: these are the biggest, in terms of die size, and have the highest boost clocks. The Efficiency types are the compact cores (i.e. Zen 4c, Zen 5c), which work exactly like the normal ones, but are smaller in size, often with less L3 cache, and have lower boost clocks.

As for the upcoming Low Power cores, AMD's Vishal Badole writes: "AMD heterogeneous parts report the core type via CPUID Fn0x80000026 EBX[31:28] (Extended CPU Topology, Core Type). Value 2 identifies a low-power core designed for minimal power consumption during background or idle workloads."

That's very similar to Intel's LPE cores (Low Power Efficiency) that you'll find in its current Panther Lake chips. These are simply E-core clusters that have been tuned to run with a very low power limit, though their boost clocks are only fractionally (100 MHz) down on the regular E-cores.

However, where AMD's Zen cores all have the same architecture and instruction set, Intel's P- and E-cores are internally quite different. That makes it a bit harder for the chip and operating system to schedule threads correctly, but both configurations rely on a variety of systems and techniques to ensure that low-performance or background task threads are issued to Efficiency cores, with the more demanding ones being sent to Performance cores.

Since there are no Zen 5LP cores in any Ryzen, Threadripper, or Epyc product, it's clear that AMD intends to announce them as part of its Zen 6 launch (though perhaps not immediately). It's also clear as to which product family they'll appear in, and it's Ryzen chips for mobile/low power platforms (i.e APUs).

Many of these already sport compact cores, such as the Ryzen AI 7 350, which has four Zen 5 and four Zen 5c cores; Valve's new Steam Machine uses an AMD CPU that has two Zen 4 and four Zen 4c cores. In both cases, the use of compact cores helps to reduce the overall die size (which improves wafer yields) and reduce chip power consumption.

The introduction of Zen 6LP should help the latter even more, or rather, open up scenarios where the processor is happy to work away with just a handful of watts. That's unlikely to be of much use in handheld gaming PCs, for example, but it should mean that future AMD-powered laptops will have even longer battery lifespans.

I do have one concern, though. If Zen 6 mobile processors are still going to be based on an eight-unit CCX (core complex), there could be some all-out performance regression if some of the Efficiency cores are exchanged for Low Power ones, assuming they have a lower boost clock. That said, there has been plenty of talk that AMD will move to a 12-unit CCX with Zen 6, and if that's also the case for its APUs, then future mobile Ryzen chips could offer the best of every world.

SteamOS, once the purview of the Steam Deck alone, eventually opened itself to other handhelds. Officially that extends only to the the Legion Go S, but beta versions of the operating system have since supported the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and "Other AMD powered handhelds."

The key term there being 'AMD', because until very recently, SteamOS had only supported handhelds running an AMD processor. Now, though, a new SteamOS beta seems to have added support for Intel and one YouTuber has got it up and running on an MSI Claw (via VideoCardz).

The 3.8.7 beta lists "Improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms" and, more conspicuously, controller support for MSI Claw devices and "SD card readability improvements" for the same. Excluding a recent deviation, the MSI Claw is of course an Intel-based handheld.

This, on its own, doesn't imply that Intel-based handhelds will actually run SteamOS well and have games playable on the platform. But thankfully ETA Prime on YouTube has actually tested it out using a Claw 8 AI+ with a Lunar Lake CPU, the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V.

They struggle to bring up the menu with the left-side button, meaning they have to go into desktop/mouse mode to do so, and they also note an inability to adjust TDP, meaning a third-party plugin is required to do so.

Apart from this, everything seems to work just fine, although games will need some optimisation, as ETA PRIME says Cyberpunk, for instance, does run better on Windows on the handheld.

We should remember this is only a beta, but it's a promising look at what's to come. I doubt Valve would be working on it if it didn't plan on getting the release out there officially for Intel handhelds.

It's certainly a good time for Valve to be working on adding Intel support to SteamOS, not least because of MSI's upcoming Panther Lake-powered Claw 8 EX AI+. That handheld certainly impressed our Dave when he tried it, and in the beta notes Valve does mention new "initial firmware for upcoming Intel handhelds", so it's exciting news on that front, too.

Well, assuming anyone will be able to afford the new Claw in the first place, that is—pricing isn't looking pretty.

I'm very intrigued by the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+. For one, I enjoyed my time with the previous iteration, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ A2VM. For a second, it's got Intel's new Arc G3 Extreme processor nestled inside. And for a third, our Dave got his hands on one at Computex, and said it "feels like the standard all new handheld gaming PCs will be judged by."

Exciting stuff. Except MSI has now listed its new mega handheld for pre-order, at the low low price of... $1,799? Holy moly, that's an expensive slice of portable gaming hardware (via Wccftech).

To be quite honest, it's not an entirely surprising figure. Earlier leaks indicated the MSRP would be well north of $1,500, and a 32 GB/1 TB handheld with a brand spanking new (and presumably very performant, given my testing of the Arc B390) Panther Lake-based chip was always going to make for a pricey machine.

Still, it didn't stop me from sucking air through my teeth when I spotted the listing earlier today. However, if you're really desperate for one, you could potentially save some cash at other retailers.

Best Buy also has a listing for the new handheld at $1,700, although as it's currently unavailable, that could well go up by the time it's actually in stock and ready to ship.

But honestly, this seems to be the pricing world we live in now when it comes to high-powered handhelds. Our best handheld gaming PC, the Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS, used to be a regular feature on our deals pages for around $750 to $800. Now you'll find it listed for north of $1,500 at most retailers that still stock it.

As our Jacob Fox recently opined, handhelds have quickly reached a point where the average gamer will struggle to afford one, and the new Panther Lake offerings are expected to be very expensive across the board. At least looking in comparison to the pre-memory/everything else crisis pricing models.

It seems like only yesterday we were complaining that the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X had a ludicrous price tag at $1,000. As that MSRP is currently holding, it's actually starting to look like a genuine value proposition less than a year after its launch. Especially when a Steam Deck OLED 1 TB with an ageing APU now costs a mere $50 less.

As convenient as handheld gaming PCs are, I'm really struggling to come to terms with these prices in regards to buying advice. While true portability and the option of playing your PC games comfortably in bed is a wonderful thing, it sure does come with a hefty premium these days.

Still, here's hoping the new Claw is as good as our early impressions suggest. It'll have to work pretty hard to justify this sort of cash, I can tell you that much for free.

Original story, 5 June 2026: HP has just announced a collaboration with luxury sports car maker Ferrari, right before the Monaco Grand Prix. Does the subject of this collab boast blistering speeds? For the cash? Uhm, not exactly.

Introducing the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari AI PC, which isn't just 'limited' in name. With only 4,999 units being made, the laptop's release later this year may be 'blink, and you'll miss it'. As per the press release, the small pool of units is intended as a reflection of "Ferrari’s philosophy to sell one less car than the market demands, and [to reinforce] the device’s status as a true collector's item." Mind you, I'm not convinced either gear heads or hardware sickos would be getting the best of either world.

To be fair to the HP Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari AI PC, it is a looker with a very snazzy 3K tandem OLED+ touch display. Beyond that, the rather fetching red chassis "marries carbon fiber and Corning Gorilla Glass construction." The underside of the laptop is partially see-through too; the cooling system in particular is visible "as a direct nod to Ferrari’s exposed engine bay design".

HP's senior vice president of design and sustainability, Stacy Wolff, bills the notebook as "a product that transcends traditional boundaries of PC design," though I cannot stress enough it's little more than a laptop in an eye-catching shiny red colourway.

But my main bone to pick is the fact that this is a $5,999 laptop, and its beating hardware heart is an Intel Core Ultra X7 358H processor with an Arc B390 iGPU. To be fair to Panther Lake chips, they make for some impressive laptop silicon, but it's important to remember the Arc B390 iGPU is intended as a step up from basic integrated graphics—and while it's great in that respect, it still isn't the beefiest gaming powerhouse on the block. For nearly $6,000? I'd want a proper dGPU, thanks.

All of that is to say, its inclusion here makes it obvious that anyone seriously looking to buy this notebook will be paying for style over substance.

If even after all of that you're still interested in picking up one of the HP's Limited Edition Scuderia Ferrari AI PCs, you've obviously got far deeper pockets than I. In that case, I'll just tell you that this collaboration laptop will be released on June 12, and then see my way back to the cheap seats.

Intel is struggling to supply laptops CPUs built using its latest 18A silicon production node, according to a new report. That basically means the Panther Lake CPU, which forms the basis of its new handheld chip the Arc G3, and the budget-priced Wild Cat Lake chip. But it may not be the 18A node itself that is the problem.

Instead, a combination of factors, some out of Intel's control, are said to be in play. The report comes from Tim Culpan, a technology journalist based in Taipei, Taiwan.

He has been speaking to numerous industry contacts at Computex 2026, including representatives of three of the six largest laptop PC manufacturers. And a common narrative has emerged.

"I spoke with people at three of the world’s top-six laptop brands, and they all gave the same feedback: supply is tight," Culpan says.

"The chipmaker is struggling with delivery of the laptop chips and has been unable to provide clarity on when the shortage would ease, according to people I’ve spoken to at major PC brands, smaller laptop makers, and system assemblers," Culpan added.

Culpan says that Alex Katouzian, Intel’s general manager of Client Computing and Physical AI, told him that there are "some" shortages of the chips but that Intel is "overcoming" them. However, the reasons are not necessarily that Intel has any problems with its 18A node.

Instead, Culpan says the supply chain and most notably TSMC may be at least part of the explanation. As he points out, Intel's Panther Lake CPUs have CPU tiles built on the in-house 18A node. But the I/O tile is made by TSMC.

Culpan claims Intel's relationship with TSMC may be "under strain" and that "TSMC’s capacity is notoriously tight right now, and Intel is unlikely to be high on the priority list."

Another part of the puzzle is Intel's new server chip Clearwater Forest, branded as Xeon 6+. It, too, is built on Intel's 18A node. Culpan says PC makers suspect that Intel is prioritising 18A capacity for Clearwater Forest over lower-margin laptop CPUs.

At the Computex press conference, Culpan asked Intel's data centre boss Kevork Kechichian how 18A capacity is allocated. “It’s complicated,” Kechichian said enigmatically, "it’s not an easy thing.”

Of course, Intel's Nova Lake desktop CPUs are due out towards the end of this year and will add further competition for 18A capacity. So, if 18A really is being hogged by those server chips, that's yet more bad news for we poor PC gamers.

AI is everywhere at Computex. Obviously. It's been like this for the past three years, where those two characters have become so ubiquitous around any tech show or presentation by any hardware or software company that I've become almost inured to it. But it's a big reason about why we can't have nice things.

It's why the DIY PC building market is down across the board, to the tune of around 30 - 40%, according to all the manufacturers I've spoken to at the show. It's why the cost of the Steam Deck has blown up, why the Steam Machine still isn't here, why the MSI Claw is going to cost $1,500, and why possibly the most tantalising Intel Panther Lake processors will probably never appear in actual laptops.

The top Panther Lake chips come with the 12 Xe-core B390 iGPU, and it's a powerful thing. It's the graphics component going into the Intel Arc G3 Extreme processors—a chip with some much graphical grunt Intel's Tom Petersen is calling it a GPU with an integrated CPU. But there is another.

The B370 is the integrated graphics chip which appears in the Core Ultra 5 338H, comes with 10 Xe cores and ought to deliver a similarly high level of gaming performance but in a cheaper package. When Intel first announced Panther Lake that was the chip I was desperate to see in an affordable Core Ultra Series 3 laptop.

But it's looking unlikely that I ever will. And it's also potentially unlikely that we're going to see any handhelds using the Intel Arc G3 chip which also comes with the same B370 iGPU.

At a demo of the new Intel Arc G3 Extreme in a range of different handhelds—including the MSI Claw, Acer Predator Atlas 8, and OneXPlayer 3—I asked Petersen whether any manufacturers were going to use the straight Arc G3 chip.

"I don't know the answer to that one," he says. "It's a great question. I think we're in a weird time with the whole DRAM thing going on right now, where the pricing difference between the two chips is small, and small relative to what's going on with DRAM.

"So, if you're going to spend the money on DRAM, why not just get the best one? I think there's some of that going on. As DRAM prices come down and the market starts normalising a little bit, then the differentiation of price that you can get by picking different SKUs will be a more important differentiator than the end user. That's my guess."

Which makes complete sense, though is all rather depressing in explaining why cheaper Panther Lake laptops with the B370 haven't arrived. It's all AI's fault and the fact it's hoovering up all the spare memory capacity and driving up prices across the board. When the difference in cost of a chip with a B370 or B390 is so comparatively small compared to the speedy LPDDR5x memory (at least 7467 MT/s or faster) that Panther Lake requires, what's the point picking the slower graphics core?

When I spoke to Framework CEO, Nirav Patel, this week at Computex, he essentially said the same thing about why it wasn't offering that version of Panther Lake as an affordable option with the new Framework 13 Pro machine.

"We basically decided that if we go all the way to the X versions, let's just get the full GPU capability," Patel explains.

I asked if that was specifically because of the small difference in comparative cost of the CPU versus the memory and he says, "Yeah, we always look at the total SKU stack that Intel or AMD offer, and we pick what we think the right sweet spots are. So it's basically for the [Core Ultra] X7 we want to make sure someone's getting the fully capable solution, and if they want to go to X9 it's really that they want that last few percent of performance for the people that can pay for it. We're going to make sure the X7 is not a compromise."

So yes, AI is still why we can't have nice things.

Intel has just announced some new processors for handheld gaming PCs, and everyone knows what that means: a new MSI Claw. While other handhelds were lapping up AMD chips, the MSI Claw boasted Intel, so it's almost a given that the new G-series chips will tuck themselves inside a new Claw—and now it looks like we might have an actual image of what the handheld will look like.

A supposed Vietnamese promo image for the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ was recently posted on Reddit (via VideoCardz) after being spotted on the MSI Claw Discord server. VideoCardz also has a different photo of it, and the site claims it has obtained this separately, which increases the likelihood that it's legit. Nevertheless, there's still an 'unverified' caveat to all this, so take the salt and pinch it.

First look at the design of the new MSI CLAW 8 EX AI+: Alleged leaked promotional image from r/MSIClaw

The Redditor who posted the image says, "The leak seems to originate from press images leaked through a Vietnamese media outlet, and I obtained it from the MSI Claw Discord server."

According to my trusty buddy ChatGPT, the image's text translates to "MSI officially announces Claw 8 EX AI+ equipped with Intel G3 Extreme." That sounds about right to me, especially given we'd seen this name for the handheld show up at online retailers previously, so I won't question my non-sentient little friend.

The main thing worth mentioning here is its design, which seems to straddle both standard and ROG Xbox Ally X styles of handheld. The latter introduced controller grips that jut away from the screen in the style of the PlayStation Portal. This allows for a bigger screen while maintaining grip comfort. It hasn't gone the whole hog like the ROG Xbox Ally, though, with the screen just jutting down a little.

The recently announced Intel Arc G-series Acer handheld, on the other hand, has gone with more of a Lenovo Legion Go S kind of design: smooth, rounded grips and nary a jut in sight. Both are likely to be more comfy than the older, angled but non-jutted designs that you'd find in, say, an original Asus ROG Ally. Handheld makers seem to have learned a lot about what makes for a comfy device.

We haven't seen an official announcement from MSI yet, so no word on an official price or release date yet. But all signs point towards something very expensive. The retailer listings I mentioned earlier had the new Claw working out, after currency conversions, to $1,800+.

So, likely not one for those on any semblance of a budget, but we'll have to wait and see. Perhaps there'll be a non-Extreme G3 version with less storage at a more reasonable price.

So, Intel has announced its new chips for handheld gaming PCs, the Intel Arc G-Series. And you know what? They're probably going to be pretty good given they're basically versions of the well-received Panther Lake processor. In fact, they could well be the fastest handheld chips on the market. Well, at least at launch. There are good reasons to doubt how committed Intel will be to Arc G in the longer term.

But here's the thing. The only reason why the top-of-the-range Intel Arc G3 Extreme could be the fastest gaming handheld chip at launch is because AMD has been dragging its feet horribly when it comes to APU technology.

AMD's Strix Point APU came out about two years ago. Strix Point was a decent advance on its predecessor, Phoenix, but it used the same TSMC N4 silicon, limiting the upgrade potential.

AMD has since launched the Gorgon Point APU, the follow up to Strix Point. But it's just a warmed over Strix Point APU in truth and, again, is still on N4 silicon.

Since Phoenix came out in 2023, AMD APUs have been stuck on the same silicon node for several years. But what you might call AMD's true next-gen APU, codenamed Medusa Point, isn't out until next year.

Now it's not entirely clear what node Medusa Point will be on. AMD has said that Zen 6, which Medusa Point will use for its CPU cores, is already in production on TSMC's new N2 node. But that's Zen 6 for Epyc server CPUs. It doesn't automatically follow that every Zen 6-based chip will be on N2.

Still, you'd expect Medusa Point to make the move to at least TSMC N3 silicon, which would represent the first node shrink for an AMD APU since 2023. And even N3 should allow AMD to squeeze in a much more powerful iGPU.

Oddly, however, the rumours suggest that Medusa Point will both stick with RDNA 3.5 graphics technology and actually regress from 16 graphics compute units (CUs) to just eight. If this is true, I'm not sure what to make of it all.

There are a couple of possibilities here. AMD could do a cut-down version of its Medusa Halo APU, which is rumoured to be getting up to 48 CUs, which fits into a handheld power budget. And that could represent a big step forward.

It's also possible that something suitable for handhelds could come out of the broader collab' on Xbox chips with Microsoft. Maybe there's a more performant mobile Xbox APU that could be used broadly in gaming handhelds.

Of course, whatever AMD has coming, it's just that—coming rather than here. Which is why the door has been left open for Intel. But, personally, I think that's a real pity.

However good Intel Arc G-series turns out to be, it's based on an essentially dead GPU architecture. Intel hasn't made an official announcement. But it didn't bother releasing its new big Battlemage GPU for gaming and all the indications are that the Arc experiment is over, with Intel set to replace Arc iGPUs in its chips with Nvidia graphics tech in a generation or two.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be super confident about paying what, in current market conditions thanks to the AI boom, will inevitably be a lot of cash for an Intel Arc G handheld. How much effort and money will Intel be putting into Arc drivers now that it has already decided to throw the towel in and let Nvidia do the gaming graphics?

Intel is promising "Day-0" driver optimisations for Arc G. But, frankly, I'll believe when I see it. And that will be doubly true a couple of years from now.

Computex 2026 hasn't even begun yet, and Intel is already rolling out the big guns. Its long-awaited Panther Lake-based handheld gaming PC processors have just been officially announced, and they're called the Intel Arc G3 and the Intel Arc G3 Extreme.

We've long mooted the idea that Panther Lake's efficiency and overall performance seem perfectly suited to a handheld chip, and after much teasing, the new processors look designed to do exactly that.

Intel says the new chips feature "up to Intel Arc B390 graphics" (that'll be the Extreme variant, then) and two P-Cores, eight E-cores, and four LPE-cores worth of processing grunt.

The blue team also says that handheld designs using the new processors will launch in the coming months, "beginning with Acer's Predator Atlas 8, MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, and OneXPlayer."

The press release promises "smooth, immersive gameplay and exceptional battery life without compromise" from the new offerings, and having messed around with a top-end Panther Lake laptop chip myself, I can believe it.

A big part of that "smooth gameplay" will likely be down to XeSS 3 support, which is highlighted alongside the new chips for its AI-based upscaling and Multi-Frame Generation chops. The company also points to Intel Precompiled Shader tech as an advantage to prevent stuttering, as it downloads prebuilt shader files in a similar way to Microsoft's competing solution.

Details are somewhat thin on the ground at the moment, although the company says we'll be getting more info at Computex 2026 itself. Still, it's a nice early official reveal, at the very least. I was just finishing my lunch, Intel. You couldn't have held on for five more minutes?

Intel has been in the news quite a lot in recent times, and for once, all for the right reasons. Panther Lake and the Arrow Lake refresh chips are top-notch, and at long last, orders are coming in for its foundry services. And if a leaked roadmap for its future desktop and laptop chips is anything to go by, Intel will be a headline story for many years to come.

Admittedly, though, deciphering the claimed roadmap from the YouTube channel Moore's Law is Dead takes a fair bit of processing, if you pardon the pun. As mentioned up top, Intel's current chip lineup primarily consists of Arrow Lake (ARL, desktop and laptop) and Panther Lake (PTL, laptop and handheld).

Naturally, these will be replaced by the next generation of microarchitectures, and first up will be Nova Lake (NVL), which is expected to make some kind of an appearance toward the end of the year. That much we already know directly from Intel, but there have been plenty of additional leaks and rumours to fill in the gaps.

After NVL, the alleged roadmap suggests that we'll see Razer Lake, though many SKUs will actually just be rebranded Nova Lake chips. After that, Titan Lake will make an appearance, replacing PTL, and this is where things begin to get interesting.

Ever since Alder Lake in 2021, its 12th Gen Core architecture, Intel has employed a hybrid approach to its consumer processor designs. Alongside the powerful and power-hungry 'Performance' cores, there are clusters of compact and power-sipping 'Efficient' cores. That will still be the case with Nova Lake and Razer Lake, but both this roadmap and previous rumours suggest that the separate core approach will be gone.

While this is being labelled as a 'unified' core design, MLID is suggesting that while there will still be P- and E-cores, Intel will be taking a leaf from AMD's book and the cores will be architecturally identical. It's just that the 'E-cores' will be more compact and lower clocked, as you see with some Ryzen laptop chips that have Zen 5 and Zen 5c cores.

Still with me? Good. On the desktop side of things, the successor to Nova Lake and Razer Lake will be Hammer Lake (cue endless Stop! It's hammer time! memes). Not only will this introduce a second generation of the unified core architecture, but it's also claimed that HyperThreading, Intel's simultaneous multithreaded system, will make a return.

It was dropped for Arrow Lake to help ensure the chips stuck within the targeted power window, and truth be told, you wouldn't notice that it's missing, given how well the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus performs in multicore tasks.

Additionally, the majority of Hammer Lake desktop models will be 'P-core' only, just as AMD doesn't use its compact cores in socketed Ryzen chips. Oh, and speaking of sockets, here's the final head-spinner: Nova Lake, Razer Lake, and Hammer Lake will apparently all use the same LGA 1954 socket, though whether that includes the massive cache, dual compute tile variants is unknown at this stage.

I've only briefly touched on what the roadmaps have to tell us, as the rest of the details are somewhat complex and confusing, and I'll need more than one cup of coffee to make sense of it all.

Although the RAMpocalypse is doing its very best to completely ruin PCs for everyone right now, perhaps by the time Intel's unified chips come to market, things will be a lot better. Maybe even back to normal—whatever normal is these days. If that comes to pass, and you've held off from upgrading until then, you could be in for a treat when it comes to picking your next gaming CPU.

A new report claims that Intel is pushing its client PC customers to buy its latest CPUs built on 18A silicon. It's said the older Intel 7 node is increasingly being reserved for more profitable server chips and even Intel CPUs made in TSMC's fabs will be in short supply.

Nikkei Asia says Intel's move is in response to "surging" demand for server CPUs thanks to good old AI. Consequently, "Intel is asking its leading PC partners, including those in the US, China and Taiwan, to increase their use of central processing units built with the company's 18A production process," the report says.

As Nikkei Asia notes, the older Intel 7 process node is still used in a wide range of CPUs for PCs and servers. On the desktop, that includes 13th Gen Alder Lake and 14th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs, like, say, the Core i7-14700K.

But the report claims Intel has told PC builders that such chips are "unlikely to see additional supply allocations or accelerated shipment schedules." What's more, that constraint also applies to CPUs which are largely manufactured by TSMC rather than on Intel 7, such as the latest Arrow Lake desktop chips.

All are apparently being deprioritised in favour of either using Intel 7 to knock out more profitable server CPUs, or otherwise upselling PC builders to CPUs based on its latest 18A node.

One executive at a PC maker told Nikkei Asia, "We recently placed an additional order for 100 Intel 7 CPUs. We only got 30, and 10 of them were built with 18A technology. We were told if we don't take the 18A CPUs, they would be given to other PC makers." Yikes.

There are a few interesting implications in all of this. First, in the immediate term, it doesn't imply anything great for desktop CPUs. That's because all of Intel's current desktop chips are either Intel 7 or TSMC silicon. There are no 18A desktop CPUs, not until Nova Lake arrives. That won't be until later this year at the earliest, and 2027 is more likely in terms of wide retail availability.

Frankly, if this report is accurate, it makes Intel's recent launch of Arrow Lake Plus chips pretty odd. The whole point of Arrow Lake Plus, which includes the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 520K Plus desktop CPU models, is to reposition Intel's desktop CPUs with a better value proposition. But what's the point if you can barely buy them?

Then there's the question of what this might do to laptop pricing. It might not be all bad news given that Intel has recently announced its new budget-specced Wildcat Lake chips. They're essentially cut-down versions of Intel's 18A-based Panther Lake CPUs, with up to two Performance and four Efficient cores. Panther Lake offers double those core counts.

Problem is, you wouldn't want just two Performance cores in a gaming laptop. So, that means high-performance portables will be forced to use more expensive Panther Lake CPUs given Arrow Lake H and HX mobile and older Raptor Lake mobile chips are presumably now hard to source.

The report also has positive implications, if true, for Intel's 18A technology. After all, if yields on 18A were terrible, Intel wouldn't be able to push PC builders to buy 18A CPUs over Intel 7 CPUs.

Anywho, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out. The whole thing with the implications of this report being that Intel's recently launched Arrow Lake Plus CPUs are being heavily de-prioritised is pretty odd, that's for sure. As I write these words, it's no problem buying an Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus on Newegg. So, is that going to change? Watch this space.

In what's looking to be The Year of Linux (TM) as well as the year of the RAMpocalypse and future market uncertainty, it's perhaps not surprising that some would try to get their hands on a solid, performant, and most importantly modular and upgradeable laptop that plays well with Linux. Though I will admit to still being a little surprised to see that, according to Framework, those who are ordering the new Framework 13 Pro are buying more of the Ubuntu-flavoured version than the Windows ones.

The official Framework account posted on X:

"Framework Laptop 13 Pro is selling far above our forecast, and we've sold out of the first six batches already. Also nice validation of our approach, the Ubuntu configurations are outselling the Windows ones!"

The company describes the Framework 13 Pro as the "MacBook Pro for Linux users", and I can see why. Judging from the specs, it has a great screen that shines at up to 700 nits, has tons of battery life thanks to the Panther Lake chips and 74 Wh battery, and fits everything inside a sleek and premium aluminium chassis.

We've already seen lots of love for the laptop from the Linux community. GloriousEggRoll of Proton GE and Nobara Linux fame, for instance, said he's enjoying it and its "freakishly good battery life." CachyOS, too, posted that "it finally feels like a genuinely premium Framework."

Admittedly, there's likely to be a disproportionate weighting towards Linux lovers to begin with, at least compared to your average laptop, given Framework machines are known to have great out-of-the-box Linux compatibility. It also makes sense that Linux users, who tend to like having more control over their operating system than in Windows, would like the modular and upgradable Framework approach.

Setting aside the weighting towards Linux, that the Framework is apparently selling out in general might also be a little surprising given it's far from a cheap machine. But the market might have something to do with that. With PC, laptop, and component prices being so expensive and the future looking so uncertain, some might want to get in with a purchase as soon as possible, not willing to risk future price hikes or stock issues. We've already seen signs of this with PC purchases, for instance.

And if there were ever a safe bet to get in the world of laptops it would be a Framework machine which you can upgrade once all this shortage malarkey has blown over—in theory, anyway.

Last October, Intel launched its Panther Lake mobile processor architecture, and when we got our hands on a Core Ultra Series 3 CPU several months later, we were greatly impressed by its gaming chops. Now it's back again with Wildcat Lake: all the best parts of Panther Lake, but cut down to a kitten-sized little chip.

Officially called Core Series 3 (no Ultra here), the new processors utilise the same Cougar Cove P-cores and Darkmont E-cores as in Panther Lake (PTL), but there are considerably fewer of them, even in the top-end model. For example, the Core 7 360 sports just two P-cores and four E-cores, for a total of six threads.

By contrast, the PTL-powered Core Ultra X7 358H houses four P-cores, eight E-cores, and four Low Power E-cores, which adds up to a total of 16 threads. However, Wildcat Lake (WCL) chips are aimed at a rather different market than PTL ones.

While they're both purely for laptops (though we'd love to see a handheld gaming PC with a beefy PTL chip), the Core Series 3 range is aimed directly at the entry-level/budget market of notebooks. This is why the integrated GPU in WCL is very small: just two Xe cores at most.

That's actually half the number of cores you'll find in a Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, and with only six PCIe lanes in WTL's controller tile, you're unlikely to see the chip used in a laptop with a discrete GPU. So you're really not going to be doing any graphics-focused gaming with a Wildcat Lake laptop.

Instead, Intel says what you will be doing is enjoying "all day battery life and everyday productivity, with up to 2.1x faster creation and productivity, up to 64% lower processor power, and up to 2.7X AI GPU performance versus previous generation Intel Core 7 150U processors."

While I have no doubt that Core Series 3 chips are very capable little things, given what I've seen with Panther Lake, I do wonder just how many businesses, organisations, and other sectors will be upgrading to new WCL laptops.

All laptops have risen in price due to supply issues with DRAM and flash memory, and the multi-tiled nature of Intel's latest processors does mean that they're more expensive to manufacture than AMD and Qualcomm's monolithic chips. Intel doesn't list market prices for its mobile processors, since you can't buy them directly, but every PTL laptop I've seen so far has been anything but cheap.

It will also be interesting to see how a Wildcat Lake laptop fares against the MacBook Neo. They're unlikely to compete on price (the Neo starts at just $599), but if the chip is considerably superior in terms of performance and battery life, it might go some way to helping customers see past the higher price tags.

Then again, every cent counts in business, and in these RAMpocalypse-trying times, Intel's little chip could be left out in the wild.

After several years of uncertainty, job cuts, issues with self-destroying CPUs, and spending billions of dollars on its foundries, Intel has made big strides in moving into a better place. Thanks largely to its latest products and deals with other tech and AI giants. Investors certainly seem to think so, because its market cap is now the highest it has been in more than two and a half decades.

As reported by Tom's Hardware, you can see the figures yourself and easily spot that the last time Intel's market capitalization was above the $300 billion mark was all the way back in October 2000. According to CompaniesMarketCap, the site tracking the figures, this makes Team Blue the 47th most valuable company in the world, though just by market cap and nothing else.

In comparison, AMD is currently enjoying a cap of $385 billion, and Nvidia is miles ahead of either company, with a market cap that's approximately $4.5 trillion in size. However, this is all somewhat of an unfair comparison, because neither of those firms have their own manufacturing plants for CPUs and GPUs, whereas Intel does.

You'd think that this would result in a higher market cap, but for the majority of Intel's history, it's only ever made chips for itself, and those fabs have been a serious financial drain in the past. But now that it's agreed to be part of Elon Musk's Terafab project, there's a chance that Intel's numerous foundries could be busy creating or packaging AI chips for SpaceX and Tesla.

Intel has already recently agreed to a chip deal with Google, and along with how well its Panther Lake and Arrow Lake 200S Plus chips have been received, it would seem to suggest that investors believe that the 57-year-old company is on the right track to regaining its former glory.

It's certainly faring better than other US-based chip companies, such as Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, which are either relatively static or currently on a bit of a slide, in terms of market cap.

Chasing down manufacturing orders seems to be what investors are most interested in Intel doing right now, probably because no matter what its desktop CPUs are like (or what they do to themselves), Intel's overall processor market share is still pretty dominant. AMD is certainly making headway in the world of server chips, though, and when it comes to PC gaming and consoles, Team Red rules the roost.

A healthy AMD and Intel is good news for consumers, because having just one company utterly dominate a market isn't great for competition (*cough graphics cards *cough). Investors are perhaps less concerned by this, but they're certainly happy with how things are going at Intel right now.

As with any new piece of PC technology, months of leaks and rumours ensured that Intel's launch of its Core Ultra 200S processors wasn't especially surprising. More cores, higher clock speeds, and lower price tags. But once I put the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Ultra 5 250K Plus chips through our battery of benchmarks, I honestly couldn't believe how good they were, especially in light of them being refreshes of CPUs that had so disappointed me back in October 2024.

But after recently chatting with Intel about Arrow Lake Refresh, the shock has been replaced by an understanding. Let me explain by going back to the launch of the first Arrow Lake processors, the original Core Ultra 200S series. For those chips, Intel held various press briefings to explain everything about the new architecture, what to expect, and why certain decisions had been made.

Time has a funny way of changing one's memories, but I can certainly recall Intel's staff coming across somewhat hesitant. Responses to questions were a little guarded, and when we all finally got our hands on the CPUs for testing, it all became very clear: Other than for a few specific applications, Arrow Lake was merely 'okay' and AMD's Zen 5 Ryzen chips were still going to be the number one choice for any PC user.

Fast forward 16 months, and it was a rather different Robert Hallock, vice president and general manager at Intel, who fielded my questions about the new chip designs. Joined by Erin Maiorino (director of CPU technical marketing) and Thomas Hannaford (desktop/workstation communications), the trio were cheery and chatty, and perhaps more importantly, confident.

Given that the 250K Plus, at just $199, runs amok in so many benchmarks (to the point that it's now our top recommendation for best mid-range CPU), such assurance is understandable. The 270K Plus, only $100 more expensive than the 250K Plus, is one of the most potent desktop CPUs Intel has made in a long time. However, there was more to it than just 'Yeah, we're happy because our new chips are really good.'

Hallock pointed out that much has changed at Intel, from staffing to internal structures, and new ways of doing things; he often remarked about how much the nearly 60-year-old company was "listening to customers".

It's not just the Arrow Lake refresh that's really good, as the Core Ultra 300 series (Panther Lake) is a great processor for laptops and would be superb in a little handheld gaming PC. I say 'would' simply because the global memory crisis has pretty much put paid to any hopes of seeing a Panther Lake-powered handheld, because it needs fast LPDDR5X DRAM to properly shine, and that stuff is super expensive now.

I've also been somewhat unfair to the first iteration of Arrow Lake, because thanks to a whole host of microcode, BIOS, driver, and operating system updates, they run an awful lot better than they first did. For outright gaming, you're still going to be choosing an AMD X3D processor, and likewise stick with Team Red for an ultra-budget chip (i.e. the $83 Ryzen 5 5500) or a workstation ultra-threaded processor, but for everything else, Intel's offerings are solid choices.

With Panther Lake, updated Arrow Lake, and the 200S Plus duo, it does seem like Intel is indeed listening to what the consumer market wants: fast, broadly capable chips that don't use too much power and don't have an outrageous price tag. Intel's even saying its future desktop PC sockets will last longer than just one or two generations of processors.

One important thing to consider is whether this is just a flash in the pan. Are the prices for the 270K and 250K Plus indicative of what to expect from Nova Lake when it rolls out later this year, or has Intel been happy to accept a lower profit margin for a short while, just to get a brief edge over AMD? Will I really be able to fit a 2029 Core Ultra 600S processor in a 2026 Z990 motherboard? Is it really listening and responding or just saying things that consumers and the market want to hear?

I suspect nobody outside of Intel has the actual answers to these questions, and as someone with a pretty poor track record of correctly predicting the future of PC tech, I'm hesitant to put my chips down (if you pardon the pun). But it does feel like this is a 'new' Intel. Not entirely new, of course, but for an enormous, multibillion-dollar company, with tens of thousands of employees around the world, it's about as new as you're going to get.

Over the decades, I've sat through countless press briefings, tech presentations, and architecture conferences, and the recent ones from Intel really do stand out. Naturally, such events should be vibrant, full of energy, and packed with promises and tech hype, but they don't always come across that way (for example, AMD's lacklustre launch of RDNA 3).

Talk is cheap, of course, and a handful of punchy or lousy presentations ultimately don't matter if the end product is rubbish or brilliant. Few PC enthusiasts aren't really going to care what somebody said on a stage one afternoon, many moons ago, when they're out shopping for a new processor or graphics card.

But they probably are going to remember, or at the very least, be influenced by reports of a company doing the right things. When it re-entered the discrete graphics card market in 2022, with its Alchemist-powered Arc range, Intel promised that it would have frequent driver updates and support. Despite having the tiniest of slices of that market, Intel has stuck to its word, though this hasn't helped shift any more Arc cards, sadly.

Just as important, the chip giant is learning from past mistakes and directions. It's only been a handful of years since we had the Intel that made Raptor Lake, a processor design with an overwhelming thirst for power and launched with some inherent operating and manufacturing flaws.

High-end desktop versions had a tendency to obliterate themselves in certain circumstances, and laptop variants were incredibly hard to keep cool. Now, we have desktop and mobile chips that sip away at power, sport excellent GPUs, and are highly versatile.

Somewhat obviously, Intel had to do this, though. With AMD constantly increasing its share of the x86 market and Arm processors making headway in the world of desktop PCs, sticking to the old ways of doing things simply wasn't an option. But regardless of what's really going on behind the scenes, at this moment in time, Intel's making the right products at the right prices.

If we all shout 'Yes! More of this, please!" and then, rather crucially, go out and buy the products, perhaps the new Intel will continue to listen for many more years to come.

Hardware Canucks has tested the latest Dell XPS 14 laptop with a Panther Lake Core Ultra 7 355 chip at its heart, and the battery life appears to be nothing short of astonishing. The channel recorded a 43-hour+ result when performing a Chrome web browsing test, beating out the latest MacBook Air 15 by roughly 28 hours.

Hardware Canucks attributes the result to a combination of the laptop's variable refresh rate display and a high-density 70 Wh battery. The MacBook has a more conventional 66 Wh unit, along with a more standard-spec display. Given the power efficiency of Intel's latest mobile efforts, I'd say the chip itself would likely have a large part to play as well.

In the YouTube video playback test, the Dell machine also managed to pull massively ahead of its Apple competitor. The XPS 14 delivered 20 hour, 21 minutes worth of video playback, while the MacBook 15 Air managed a still-impressive 14 hour and two minute score.

In the gaming test, however, the MacBook Air 15 managed to gain a significant lead with a four hour and ten minute maximum, compared to the Dell's two hour 38 minute battery life. That's a shame, especially as the Core Ultra 355 has the standard Intel Graphics iGPU, and not the surprisingly-punchy Arc B390.

From my own Panther Lake battery life testing with that particular iGPU, I can say that it feels pretty revolutionary to be playing games on the train at high frame rates without being plugged into the wall or worrying too much about the remaining charge. What can I say, I'm used to traditional gaming laptop battery life, which is usually far from impressive.

Even having had some personal experience with a PTL laptop, though (albeit one with a more powerful, top-of-the-line chip under the hood), I wouldn't have predicted a browsing battery life result for the lesser-chipped version of nearly two days.

It looks like the variable refresh rate display really is doing some heavy lifting here, alongside the efficiency gains of Intel's new silicon. What's next, gaming headsets that last for weeks? Oh yeah. We've been there for a while already. Never mind.

We're only a couple of months off the back of Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 'Panther Lake' laptop chips, which our Andy called "fast, feisty, and fabulous" after extensive testing, and now we've got some concrete specs for a new generation of Intel mobile chips—assuming X user Jaykihn's leaked table is legit, that is. As these things go, this leaker is reliable and often right about these things, so there's good reason to take them seriously.

You might have noticed the lack of an 'Ultra' designator, here, and that's because these chips aren't actually direct successors to Panther Lake ones. Instead, they're low-power ones, meant for thinner and cheaper laptops.

You'll also notice in the reproduced and simplified table above that there's a conspicuous lack of E-Cores—there are only LPE-cores, which are the low power variants. And these LPE-cores will be Darkmont ones, the same that we get in Panther Lake. We'll still be getting some more performant P-cores, of course: two of them alongside four LPE-cores.

That's for all six models listed, from the Core 3 304 up to the Core 7 360. Another spec that's the same for all chips in the line-up is a 35 W turbo TDP (base 15 W). That's far from the TDPs of high-end Panther Lake chips, and is more in line with what we see in some of the best handheld gaming PCs, such as in the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme.

We're also unfortunately only getting a maximum of two Xe graphics cores, at least in these variants, which means they likely won't be as good as the chips in current handheld gaming PCs, so it's unlikely these will be picked for that purpose.

Still, given how much Panther Lake has impressed us on the performance and efficiency front, these Wildcat Lake chips will hopefully make for some mean little efficiency machines—just probably not for anything near serious gaming.

There's also the chance that further models could launch which do have more Xe cores, with an X designator such as a Core 7 360X, just as we have with Panther Lake chips.

Apple turns 50 today. The big 5-0. That company from Cupertino, California is one of the biggest success stories in tech. It's built an empire from selling phones and laptops to people that have moustaches tattooed on their fingers and unironically wore suspenders in 2010. A mighty accomplishment.

Alright, I will lay off the sarcasm for Apple's big day, even if it is also April Fool's—arguably the worst day on the calendar. Even a PC gamer such as myself can admit what Apple has achieved in recent years is impressive. It's no longer selling Intel-powered laptops with fewer options at higher prices. It's selling homegrown, powerful Arm silicon with an OS and software stack that feels more in sync than Microsoft or anyone else could dream of.

It's easy for PC users to poke fun at Apple users: everyone's buying the same thing for the same high price. And Apple has done its fair share to reinforce that snarky relationship. In my mind, it was just a couple years ago—though, in fact, 20 years have passed—when the company lived rent free in PC owners' heads with the launch of its very popular adverts, known for the opening line, "I'm a Mac. I'm a PC." These painted PC users as snivelling dorks. At the very least I'm not snivelling.

But I've recently ditched Android in favour of iOS, if only to a) ditch Google, b) try something new, and c) get my hands on an A18 chip. I've even bought an iPad Mini since and am now enjoying the excellence that is the Apple Pencil Pro. Despite being a many-decades lapsed Apple user, and now running both Linux and Windows day-to-day, I like my Apple devices.

But forget Pencils, Apple's strongest feature, at least to a performance-obsessed PC gamer such as myself, is the silicon.

When it first announced the M1 chip in 2020, ditching a long-standing relationship with Intel in the process, I had feared the worst for Apple's ecosystem. Mobile applications do not replace desktop applications. Let alone mobile applications running on an Arm-based processor, which is what Apple's silicon is. But that line between mobile and desktop is thinning. No more so since the release of the MacBook Neo.

The MacBook Neo was well reviewed by our Ian Evenden. As by many more. It's an affordable laptop that's powered by a processor previously used in iPhones. It's not just a mobile chip in the sense that it's for laptops. It's literally a mobile phone chip. A mobile phone chip that's competitive with older M-series chips and shares similarities with the M4 chip, only smaller, and requiring only a cutesy motherboard. It's not something you could fathom on PC, but Apple can do it; made possible by the company's in-house chip design and total ownership of the silicon and software stack.

Apple didn't start designing chips when it made the M1. It began working on its own Arm-powered processors way back with the A4 chip in the iPhone 4—that was actually the last iPhone I owned before this one. It wasn't starting from scratch: it had developed a pile of mobile chips before it ever turned its hand to something more powerful for use in its laptops and, later, high-end iPads.

It also had the foresight of building out its MacBook operating system, OS X, to more easily switch between underlying architectures. Switching from PowerPC to Intel in the early noughts meant Apple had already laid the groundwork for a momentous architectural shake-up. It made that switch at the time by cleverly anticipating the move all along: OS X had already been running on Intel chips for years prior to Apple's announcement. Developers, too, could get their applications ready for the switch with tools like Rosetta.

Rosetta was introduced around 2006 as a translation layer to run software designed for PowerPC chips on Intel chips. That was a big shift. Later, Rosetta (Rosetta 2) was introduced to do something very similar for the modern era of Apple devices: run software designed for Intel chips on Apple silicon chips. Rosetta 2 will mostly be ditched by 2027, meaning that's when developers need to ship an Apple silicon-native application or ship out.

Apple gets to force big changes on developers by holding the keys to both software and hardware. Microsoft, on the other hand, can only push developers in a direction. Windows on Arm is not a wholesale shift for Microsoft from Windows on x86. It's doing both, because it has to. The PC market is totally dominated by x86 chips, and it takes a company like Qualcomm to design and spend a lot of money trying to break into the PC market with an Arm-powered processor to incite any sort of major change.

Mercury Research suggests Arm PCs, including those with Apple's M-series chips, make up roughly 13% of the overall client market. Compare that to around 6% in Q1, 2021, this marks a huge increase in a relatively short period of time—AMD has been fighting tooth and nail with Intel for decades to earn roughly 25% of the market. Though the release of Qualcomm's most recent X2 chips hasn't moved the dial much. This time last year, Arm share in client PCs was estimated to sit at, again, around 13%.

Our hobby of PC gaming and DIY builds is far better for the flexibility afforded to it. However,

while I do not want its singular influence over my gaming rig and what's in it, Apple has leveraged its total control over its own hardware and software incredibly well over the past few years.

Just look at Ian's performance testing for Apple's most recent M5 chip in GeekBench 6. In the new MacBook Pro, the M5 hit a single-threaded score of 4,310. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D, ostensibly the fastest desktop processor for gaming today, scored just 3,332. The Core Ultra 9 285K reached 3,214. Need I remind you, the M5 is in a slim 14-inch laptop. The performance from this chip is quite extraordinary.

Qualcomm also finds pace in testing with its latest and largest Arm processor, the X2 Elite Extreme. It remains slower than Apple's comparative M5 silicon in single-threaded performance but blasts past Intel and AMD's chips, the Core Ultra X9 388H and AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, respectively. It also has 18 cores in total for big multithreaded gains.

That said, we do have to talk about the elephant in the room. A big one for a website called PC Gamer. That is, of course, gaming.

Gaming is traditionally Apple's weak point. Even with the best will in the world—and a sizeable GPU—the M5 just isn't going to be the choice among gamers. The Intel Arc B390 iGPU found in Panther Lake, however, is a graphical wunderkin in our testing. Though I don't think we're far from a reality where gaming on Apple is more commonplace.

It is possible to play games like Resident Evil Village, Death Stranding, Cyberpunk 2077, and Control on a Mac. Native support, and whether said support is worth it for developers, being the biggest hurdle for gaming on Mac rather than explicit hardware capability.

Though there are exciting developments in the world of Arm gaming. The Steam Frame, Valve's upcoming VR headset, runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (SM8650) processor. It uses a translation layer called FEX to translate garbled x86 commands into something its Arm chip can understand. In doing so, it loses around 10-20% of performance (as of late last year when I asked Valve), but it works. I tried it, it was good. Valve is also running a translation layer to run games for Windows on the Linux-based SteamOS at the same time.

As I've said before, Valve is all in on Arm and even launched a native Steam client for Apple silicon in June last year.

Apple has something similar: the Game Porting Toolkit. It's intended for evaluating the possibility of a native Mac port, rather than rolling out for users to give it a go. Nevertheless, we are reaching a point where the question of how you translate a game designed for Windows and x86 to Arm and other operating systems is high on the agenda. Microsoft is something similar with Prism, designed to run Windows games on Windows on Arm. Even Nvidia may have a vested interested as it's rumoured to be close to launching an Arm-based consumer chip, the N1X, with cores to match Intel and AMD's alongside a chunky GPU.

For Microsoft, Nvidia, Qualcomm and others, Apple has proven the formula; how to migrate to an entirely new architecture without much delay or major issue. How to leverage silicon in new and exciting ways, as users look for more powerful devices in form factors usually reserved for lesser mobile chips. Apple silicon covers most bases for performance and affordability; consequently blurring the lines between laptop and mobile. That's especially interesting when Valve is talking about the Steam Frame in similar ways, and, to be honest, we'd be all over an Arm-powered Steam Deck with excellent battery life.

It's certainly convinced me. Not because I want to buy an Apple device for my next gaming machine, far from it, but because I totally would buy an Arm one.

With the launch of its Arrow Lake refresh processors, Intel didn't just release some of the best CPUs it's made in years, it also introduced a new software package called Binary Optimization Tool, or BOT for short. Over the past week, I've been testing BOT to assess whether Intel's claims have merit and whether it will become increasingly important over time or fade into obscurity as a neat idea but not worth the time and effort.

But what exactly is BOT? The simple answer is that it's similar to how GPU vendors release drivers with fixes/support for specific games, where certain shaders are replaced by ones that ensure the game renders correctly on the graphics chip. What Intel is doing is rejigging certain thread instructions from a game, such that the CPU can process things more efficiently, making full use of cache, core execution units, and so on.

At the moment, BOT is only supported on desktop and mobile 200S Plus chips, such as the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, and Panther Lake laptop processors, and while there's a chance it could be brought to older processors, part of the changes in the Arrow Lake refresh were an increased number of hardware hooks in the compute tile.

These give Intel's engineers a better insight into what's going on deep inside the processor, and without those, it's possible that a BOT which supports earlier CPUs just won't be able to offer the same kind of uplift, if any at all.

However, it's also worth noting that Intel has only BOTified 12 games so far, and given that none of the testing, optimizing, and rewriting of instruction scheduling is a simple automated process, we're not going to see Intel churning out BOT updates on any kind of regular schedule.

So if you were disappointed that the tool isn't being offered for your 14th Gen Core processor, for example, you're not missing out on anything if you don't play any of the currently-supported games.

Binary Optimization Tool has been integrated into the already-existing Intel Application Optimization Tool (APO), but as the two things are entirely separate, they can be independently enabled in games that support both options.

Enough jibber-jabber, let's get on with what's important here: how much more performance do you get from using BOT? Well, before we see any figures, let me emphasise something important here: Binary Optimization Tool is all about the CPU, so it won't result in games being rendered any faster, as such, because that's almost entirely down to the graphics card in your gaming PC.

But the CPU still needs to process graphics instructions for the GPU to crunch through, and if those threads aren't being handled quite right for Intel's Arrow Lake refresh architecture, then they might be causing a bit of a performance issue.

However, the rate at which a PC produces frames for display on a monitor is controlled by a number of factors, and the performance of the entire rendering pipeline is determined by the slowest stage in that chain. If that's not the CPU, then no amount of BOTification will improve the frame rate.

The first game I tested was Shadow of the Tomb Raider (SOTTR), as Intel claimed to achieve the biggest improvement in performance with the use of BOT here. The basic hardware setup for all my tests comprised a Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, 32 GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 CL30, and a Zotac GeForce RTX 4070. Most tests of this ilk are done with an RTX 5090, but using a mainstream GPU gives you a more real-world view of what BOT can achieve.

SOTTR has a really good built-in benchmark tool that separately tracks the speed at which the CPU processes the game's main engine, as well as rendering instructions, and how fast the GPU churns out frames.

For the sake of simplicity, I've enabled APO and BOT together (the former doesn't make a huge difference with Arrow Lake, as the E-cores are really very good), and the effect is quite dramatic. Together, the optimizations lift the 'CPU game' performance by 35% on average, with the 1% low figure increasing by 41%.

I've done multiple test runs for each game, and in some instances, the SOTTR 'CPU game' improved by as much as 58%, which is quite incredible to see. However, the overall benchmark never gains anything more than 4 or 5% to the average frame rate, and that's because at 1080p High, SOTTR is relatively GPU-bound on an RTX 4070.

But look closely at the above images, specifically the frame times for the GPU and CPU (green line in the bottom graph, lower is faster). Notice how much APO+BOT speeds up the rate at which the CPU crunches through everything in the second half of the benchmark. It transforms the test from being 52% GPU-bound, on average, to 97% GPU-bound; that's exactly what you want from a game.

However, that's just a fancy benchmark, right? It's not the game itself. To that end, I tested Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, which is a game that Intel only offers BOT for, and it has no built-in benchmark, so the results are 'pure' gameplay.

Over the course of five minutes of swinging around the city, I recorded an 8% higher average frame rate and 7% better 1% lows with BOT enabled, at 1080p High. Those figures would be lower at a higher resolution, of course, but they would also be better with a more powerful graphics card than an RTX 4070.

Alas, these were the highlights of my testing. Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p High only improved by 2% on average, as did Borderlands 3 (also 1080p High), though the latter's 1% lows actually decreased by 4% (but that game's been twitchy from the get-go). And in Assassin's Creed Mirage and Hitman 3, I experienced almost no improvements with APO and BOT enabled.

In the case of the Mirage, the issue there was certainly the RTX 4070, despite running the game at 1080p High. Dropping the graphics preset to Low and enabling DLSS Ultra Performance saw the combination of APO and BOT improve the average and 1% low frame rates by 3% apiece.

So, what to make of all of this? To start with, Intel's Binary Optimization Tool clearly works as claimed for the most part, and for games that have CPU instructions written in such a way that the Arrow Lake refresh chips aren't handling them as well as they could, BOT is literally a game-changer, as it pushes the performance limitation to where it should be, i.e. on the GPU.

Having your graphics card be entirely responsible for the end frame rate means you can fully control the performance you want by changing graphics settings, using upscaling and frame generation, and so on. However, if a game is already GPU-bound on your gaming PC, then no amount of BOTtastic tweaks will make a difference.

This is most evident in Cyberpunk 2077, Hitman 3, Borderlands 3, and Assassin's Creed Mirage, with an RTX 4070, whereas Spider-Man Remastered picks up a decent enough performance increase with BOT. While 8% isn't overwhelming, the fact that you're getting this from a mere software override is quite impressive.

There is a category of games, though, that would really benefit from Intel's BOT: esports, especially competitive shooters. Pro gamers typically use a combination of the lowest graphics settings and 1080p resolution to get the maximum possible frame rate, and this typically results in the game being almost entirely CPU-bound.

Unfortunately, you're not likely to see Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, or Overwatch getting BOT support anytime soon. That's because Intel's system has to inject itself into the game's code to override instructions, and any software that does that in a competitive game will generally result in the player getting a very swift ban.

Intel says it's working with studios and developers to find a way of implementing BOT that won't cause issues like this, but I suspect that some companies are wary that cheaters will find a way to use BOT to implement a hack and cheat away to their heart's content.

Having spent a long time developing Binary Optimization Tool, Intel certainly isn't going to drop it if esports publishers ultimately say no to BOT, and I reckon that the feature will become even more prevalent when Nova Lake finally makes an appearance (currently on track for later this year, but who knows for sure?).

Right now, though, you can only take advantage of it if you have a Core Ultra 200S Plus chip, and while they're really very good processors, that's going to be a very small pool of PC enthusiasts who will get to see it in action. Current Arrow Lake owners might not be tempted to splash out $200 or $300 on a new CPU, just to use BOT, but you will see some pre-built PCs sporting a 250K Plus or 270K Plus chip over the coming months.

But even so, that's still not going to result in many gamers testing out BOT and giving feedback to Intel about its usefulness. Which is a shame, because the benefits are definitely there.

If you do happen to buy a new Arrow Lake refresh chip, then simply download the very latest Intel Platform Performance Package (IPPP), install that, and you should be able to dive into BOTifying the small number of games currently supported.

A word of caution, though: When I first tested BOT, on a PC with a fresh Windows installation and the motherboard handling the automatic installation of drivers, I found that BOT actually made things a lot worse (up to 25% lower frame rates).

After discussing these issues with Intel, I tried a new installation of Windows, disabled the motherboard's auto-driver feature, and just installed IPPP and the GPU drivers. That resulted in a perfectly working BOT, so if you do have an Arrow Lake PC at the moment and you slap a 200S Plus into it, you might find that the only way to get BOT working properly is by doing the same 'fresh Windows + IPPP-only' installation that I did.

Intel's had a couple of rough years of late, and while it's not totally out of the woods just yet, the likes of Binary Optimization Tool and the Core Ultra 200S Plus processors show that all the internal changes it's made (new staff, restructured divisions, 'listening to the customer') are starting to bear fruit. Let's hope that this new Intel carries on this way for good.

Intel is making some eye-popping claims for its latest graphics driver release for Arc graphics. According to the official release notes, the Intel Core Ultra series 3—otherwise known as Panther Lake—benefits from a fully 35% uplift in Witcher 3 performance.

Specifically, that's 35% when running at 1080p High, which should be a pretty relevant setting for what is a high-performing iGPU. Witcher 3 wasn't part of our benchmark suite when Andy ran Panther Lake through its paces. However, given the broad performance profile of Witcher 3 and the capability of Panther Lake's iGPU, 1080p High is very much a plausible target.

Our performance review found that the Arc B390 iGPU in Panther Lake delivers roughly 75% the frame rate of an RTX 4050 laptop GPU. And that Nvidia chip generally hits 60 fps-plus in the Witcher 3 at 1080p High.

So, you'd expect a reasonably playable 40-something fps from Panther Lake. Add another 35%, and you'd have a pretty decent experience, though the boost may be fixing what was a slightly anomalous performance in that title for Panther Lake.

The new driver also promises more performance for Intel's now elderly A-Series GPUs, such as the Intel Arc A770, though in this case, it's Resident Evil Requiem that receives more frames. In this context, Intel is actually claiming up to 40% average fps uplift at 1080p with Ultra settings and up to 30% boost at 1440p Ultra.

Anywho, exactly where Intel is extracting the performance from the Arc B390 iGPU in particular is an open question. However, Nick's recent analysis presents one interesting possibility.

He concluded that one limiting factor for the iGPU involves "how well Intel's drivers and firmware currently handle data flows between the shared system memory and the iGPU.

"There's a decent amount of bandwidth on tap from using fast LPDDR5x, but those DRAM latencies aren't exactly great, and I suspect that stops the Arc B390 from being able to reach its full potential in some games."

So, maybe Intel has made some progress with tuning that shared memory interface. Whatever, the Arc B390 was already the best iGPU out there. Now it's just got that little bit better. If you are running an Arc GPU, you can snag the new driver here.

Back in October of last year, at the Arizona Tech Tour event, Intel announced the details behind its Panther Lake CPU architecture. Almost as a small aside, it also introduced XeSS 3, an update to its AI-powered graphics suite in the form of multi-frame generation. That made an official appearance with the launch of the Core Ultra 300-series of processors, but with the latest set of Arc drivers, now any Intel GPU owner can get into a spot of multi-frame interpolation action.

You can download the new WHQL-certified 32.0.101.8509 set of drivers from here, and if you have any Intel Alchemist or Battlemage GPU, you'll be able to enable XeSS 3 MFG (multi-frame generation) as an override in Intel's Graphics Software app.

Just head to the Graphics section in the left-hand menu, and you'll see the option to force a game to use 2x or higher frame gen.

And I don't just mean the discrete Arc graphics cards, such as the A770 or B850, either. GPUs integrated into Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, and Arrow Lake processors support it too, and that's because when Intel brought its Xe graphics architecture to market, it decided that every single level of GPU would sport XMX units (Xe Matrix Extensions).

These pipelines within the GPU are equivalent to Nvidia's Tensor cores, and are designed to handle the matrix/tensor calculations that AI algorithms routinely use. You can do them on standard shader cores, but with dedicated hardware, you get way better performance.

Now, it's important to understand that XeSS 3 MFG can't just be applied to any game: it has to already support the standard XeSS FG (specifically version 1.1 as a minimum). Compared to the number of games with DLSS or FSR frame gen implemented in them, Intel's collection of XeSS-supported games is pretty small.

But even so, this distinctly puts AMD in third place when it comes to frame generation, because it's now the only GPU vendor that doesn't offer multi-frame interpolation.

One game that certainly does support XeSS Frame Generation is Cyberpunk 2077, so I fired it up on a Core Ultra 9 285K test bench, with no discrete graphics card installed. Just the pure, unadulterated sheer power of the integrated 'Intel Graphics': 512 Xe shaders, with a boost clock of 2,000 MHz.

With the graphics preset of Medium and a resolution of 1080p (no upscaling), the little four Xe unit iGPU can barely reach an average of 20 fps in Cyberpunk's built-in benchmark. Activating the XeSS 3 MFG override, with a value of 2x, lifts this to 31 fps, but the end result isn't great.

For a start, the output is decidedly choppy, but I also discovered that using the MFG override also disables any screen scaling. What I mean by that is that I use a 4K monitor on my test rigs, but even with Cyberpunk 2077 set to 2077, the output will still fill the screen. However, with the MFG override, the game's output is now just a small slice of the monitor (i.e. a 1080p slice).

I got around this problem by setting the display resolution in Windows to 1080p, though it might just be an issue exclusive to my hardware configuration and/or this particular game, as I don't experience the problem if I use the native implementation of XeSS frame gen. If you only ever plan to use 2x MFG, it would seem that it's not worth using the override functionality.

Not that you would anyway, as it's the 3x and 4x options that XeSS 3 is bringing to the party, so to see what the full shebang is like, I reran the benchmark with the maximum override setting applied. I got an average frame rate of just under 48 fps, which certainly isn't four times greater than 20 fps, but that's the nature of the beast.

Frame generation should only be applied in situations where a game's performance is either completely CPU-limited or it already has a decent baseline frame rate, such as 60 fps. Tiny iGPUs, like the one I used, really need a fair amount of upscaling to give them breathing room to handle the frame generation algorithm, but if it's a meaty one, like the Arc B390 used in the top-end Panther Lake CPUs, Intel's MFG should really help a lot.

So, although my initial tests of XeSS 3 multi-frame generation might not appear to be particularly encouraging, the fact that any Arc owner can dive in and experiment with the system is great news. No mods or additional software are required, just any Xe GPU and the latest drivers. Are you paying attention, AMD?

After the early promises of how good Intel's Xe3 GPU architecture could be, thanks to Intel's breakdown of the changes implemented to everything, we finally got to test one properly last month in the form of a Panther Lake laptop. And you know what? It is good. Very good, in fact.

On paper, that should be a given. Intel's Arc B390 only sports 1536 shaders, but with 16 MB of L2 cache and a boost clock of 2.5 GHz, that's way more potent than most integrated GPUs.

Leaving aside AMD's Ryzen AI Max chips (aka Strix Halo), as they're less an APU with a big iGPU and more of a small GPU with some CPU chips bolted to it, the most appropriate competition for the B390 is AMD's Radeon 890M and Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5050.

I was really curious to see just what the fundamental peak performance of the B390 was like, taking the iGPU out of games and jamming it into some very specific microbenchmarks. However, with neither an 890M nor RTX 5050 to hand, I had to make do with the next best things: the previous generation Radeon 780M and RTX 4050.

The key areas I wanted to look at were: peak instruction throughput, cache and VRAM bandwidth, plus latencies for the latter. They're not the only things that matter for a GPU, but if these are solid enough, then the rest of the chip's performance should follow suit.

To that end, I utilised Nemez's GPUPerfTest, a nifty little project that the developer kindly donated to Chips and Cheese's benchmarking suite, and after compiling the latest repo in its GitHub, I set about comparing the three GPUs, plus one more for good measure.

That extra graphics chip is Intel's first generation of Xe architecture, the Alchemist-powered Arc A770. Rather than radically change the internals with each update, Intel has just consolidated what worked well and improved the weak areas, so in many ways, Xe3 is just a nicely vamped up Xe.

Peak shader throughput

Let's begin by looking at the peak throughput of a very common instruction in graphics rendering: fused multiply-add, or MADD for short. With this single command, a processor will take two values, multiply them together, and then add the result to a third value. It gets used all the time in graphics rendering, so a good result here is important.

The test repeats the instruction throughput across a range of different data formats, and I've selected the ones that are most appropriate here (though INT8 and INT16 are far less of a concern in games than FP32, FP16, and INT32).

Now, it's important to understand that the result depends heavily on the number of shaders and what clock speed they have. For example, an RTX 4050 has 2560 CUDA cores, boosting up to 1.8 GHz, which gives a theoretical peak FP32 throughput of just under 9 TFLOPS.

As you can see, the RTX 4050 I've used is well short of that peak, but that's because it's only a 75 W version, so it's probably not able to sustain its boost clocks long enough. Plus, the test itself doesn't operate in a theoretically perfect world, so there's always going to be some differences between reality and paper.

The Arc B390 should be able to hit around 7 or 8 TFLOPS at FP32 and double that figure for FP16. Just like the RTX 4050, it's well short of those figures, but note how it keeps the Arc A770 in its sights? This is a 'little' iGPU keeping up with a full-sized graphics card with a 400 square millimetre GPU.

Cache and memory bandwidth

The next test I ran was one that essentially measures the peak data throughput, for different data sizes, with all the GPU's shaders kept busy demanding said data. It's not only useful to see how well the processor can keep its logic units fed with information, but it also gives you a clear indication of cache sizes.

Where the lines go from being flat to taking a nose down marks the rough boundary of how big the various cache sizes are. Not entirely so, because drivers are often a bit funny about how they interpret Vulkan instructions (the API used for the test), and in some cases, the cache is an adjustable shared memory, rather than being fixed in size.

The more pipelines a GPU has, the greater the initial bandwidth will be, which is why the 4096-shader A770 is way above the tiny B390, 780M, and RTX 4050. However, the clock speed of the caches also matters, and this is why the Xe3 iGPU does so well here, faring nicely against the little Nvidia chip.

But it's even more impressive when you realise there are relatively few shaders in the B390. Yes, they're clocked pretty high, but pulling 6 TB/s from the L1 cache suggests that it has a very wide internal data bus. You'd expect that with a big dGPU, not a teeny iGPU.

One surprise, though, is just how poor the Radeon 780M is in the test. AMD uses a clever, if complex, cache system to maximise data flow throughout the GPU, but you wouldn't think that here, looking at these results. What I suspect is that the problem is that this particular iGPU is that of an Asus ROG Ally, a device that gets driver updates on a very slow cadence.

Cache and memory latency

Having lots of internal bandwidth is all well and good, but if the GPU's cache system takes a long time to respond to data requests, then all it will do is stall shader pipelines that have requested said data (with the end result being a reduction in performance).

So the final test I ran was looking at the cache latency: the time in nanoseconds between a data request being issued and the data being delivered. Architecture is important here, but so too are clock speeds. Just as before, where the lines change from flat to going up is where you can glean how large the caches are.

In the case of the Arc B390 it has a pretty swift L1 cache, but it actually reported the lowest L2 latencies of all the chips I tested, coming in well under the RTX 4050 and Arc A770. Unfortunately, the final stages of the graph shows Xe3's biggest weakness: the use of LPDDR5x.

Where the Arc A770 and GeForce RTX 4050 both use dedicated GDDR6 modules, the Arc B390 has to use system memory for its VRAM, and not only is LPDDR5x a bit sluggish (in terms of latencies), that memory also has to contend with instructions from the rest of the system.

However, note how poor the A770's VRAM latencies are compared to the RTX 4050, despite using exactly the same type and speed of GDDR6? Sure, the B390 is worse (and much worse compared to the 780M which is also using system-shared LPDDR5x), but it's superior all round until the data requests hit the DRAM.

Xe3's strengths and weaknesses

Three small microbenchmarks aren't enough to glean a full insight into the inner workings of a processor, but they're enough to get an inclination as to what's good and bad about the Xe3 architecture in the Arc B390.

Basically, it's all good bar one thing: the lack of dedicated VRAM. Or rather, how well Intel's drivers and firmware currently handle data flows between the shared system memory and the iGPU. There's a decent amount of bandwidth on tap from using fast LPDDR5x, but those DRAM latencies aren't exactly great, and I suspect that stops the Arc B390 from being able to reach its full potential in some games.

But just imagine a big Xe3 GPU, in a proper discrete graphics card with lots of high-speed GDDR7 memory. That would certainly give AMD and Nvidia something to fret over if it ever came to market, but Intel is in no rush to bring anything like that to market. There's talk of an Xe3-variant, X3P, being used for Intel's next generation of Arc graphics cards, but Team Blue's been pretty tight-lipped about it all.

The architecture is good, great even; it just deserves a better home than a laptop processor, no matter how nice it is.

Hardware Canucks has posted a performance preview of Qualcomm's new second-gen Snapdragon X2 PC chip. And with the very heavy proviso that it's a video sponsored by none other than Qualcomm, we can say that, well, it looks decent but not hugely exciting.

The comparison here is a bit tricky given all the different possible chip SKUs offered by the various vendors, including Qualcomm itself, Intel, AMD and Apple. And you might argue that the chips used for the comparison are not the best choices. Even the Qualcomm X2 chip used isn't the absolute fastest model, but at least all the various vendors are represented.

For the record, the Qualcomm chip being tested is the Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-88-100. That's got all 18 cores and the full-spec iGPU. But the CPU cores are slightly lower clocked than the top-spec X2 Elite Extreme models and, perhaps more importantly for games, it runs a 128-bit memory bus where the Extreme chips get a 192-bit bus.

With all that in mind, what have we learned? For multi-threaded workloads, that 18-core Qualcomm CPU is a monster and beats the 10-core Apple M5, 12-core AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, and 16-core Intel Core Ultra X9 388H, the latter being Intel's new Panther Lake CPU. That applies to both synthetic tests like Cinebench and more real-world tests like Blender.

In single-core performance, Apple's M5 still rules, but the Qualcomm chip has the edge over AMD and Intel, scoring 146 points in Cinebench 2024, versus 130 for Panther Lake and 112 for the AMD chip.

Of course, what we really care about is gaming. And here, the results would have been pretty decent except for one small snag. Yup, it's that pesky Intel Panther Lake chip. Hardware Canucks also includes some gaming results for Intel's previous-gen Lunar Lake chip. And if it was that older APU plus AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 that the new Snapdragon X2 had to take on, you'd give it the edge, at least by these limited results.

But Panther Lake does exist and it wins across the board. It wallops the Qualcomm chip in Counter-Strike 2 at 1200p High settings with 189 fps average to the Snapdragon X2's 112 fps. In Cyberpunk 2077 at 1200p Medium with RT off, the results are closer, with the X2 on 40 fps average to Panther Lake's 46 fps. Baldur's Gate 3 is another win for Intel, with 59 fps at 1200p Low settings to the X2's 54 fps.

For the record, the AMD APU is ahead of the X2 in Counter-Strike 2, but behind in the other two games. Anyway, the reality is that if gaming is a significant priority, the Qualcomm chip doesn't just have to compete on performance, it has to convince on compatibility.

Now, it is true that this has improved for the Arm-based Qualcomm chip since its launch 18 months ago or so. Importantly, Microsoft has added kernel-level anti-cheat support to Windows on Arm, which means games like Fortnite can now run on the Snapdragon chips.

It's also true that this isn't the fastest Snapdragon X2. The Extreme models have a wider memory bus, so they should be a bit quicker in games. Maybe the Extreme models will just about match Panther Lake in titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3.

But compatibility remains a concern in a way that simply isn't for any x86 chip. So, the way I see it, you're only going to consider this Qualcomm chip if its pure performance is so much better than Panther Lake that it offsets the compatibility concerns of trying to run x86 games on an Arm CPU. And that is incredibly unlikely, going by this early look.

In the end, the Qualcomm gaming pitch is still falling a little flat with its Snapdragon X2 chips. Qualcomm massively over-promised regarding gaming with the first generation of Snapdragon X. With the X2, it's leaning into gaming again, and while there are clear improvements, Intel has literally moved the game on for this type of ultra-light APU, and it seems unlikely that Qualcomm can keep up.

All of which means the long-promised wait for the Arm invasion of the gaming PC continues, even in ultra-light laptops. Maybe it will be Nvidia, after all, that delivers the first truly gameable Arm-based PC.

Documents detailing technical aspects of what's thought to be its next-gen Zen 6 CPUs have been posted on AMD's website. The most significant covers AMD's adoption of Intel's so-called 'FRED' interrupt handling. It's a change that implies that Zen 6 could be a major architectural overhaul as opposed to a relatively minor revision.

FRED stands for Flexible Return and Event Delivery. At least, that's what it stands for now. No lesser an authority than Linux creator Linus Torvalds has something to say about that, more on which in a moment.

It's a replacement for the decades-old IDT or Interrupt Descriptor Table that dates way back to the Intel 286 processor circa 1982. Both FRED and IDT are instructions for how to handle system events, such as a mouse input or the arrival of a network data packet, also known as interrupts.

The technicalities are complicated. But to aggressively simplify the subject, with IDT, the smooth handling of these system events requires software developers to manually manage interrupts over several steps to minimise the risk of multiple interrupts conflicting with each other.

FRED ditches IDT's multiple manually-implemented instructions in favour of a single, optimised operation. The upshot should be fewer CPU cycles spent on event handling and potentially more performance.

Of course, the fact that FRED is an Intel technology ratified by the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Board and being adopted by AMD implies that the latter's CPUs won't be the only ones to enjoy any performance gains. That's probably true.

As it happens, Intel's new Panther Lake chip is its first CPU to support FRED. Panther Lake is certainly a very nice mobile CPU. But it doesn't bring really dramatic per-core CPU performance gains, albeit any uplift from FRED may not automatically be present in legacy software. In other words, the benefits of FRED may not be visible benchmarking existing software as opposed to code compiled explicitly to support FRED.

Anywho, getting back to Mr. Torvalds, back in 2021, he opined quite positively on FRED. "The Intel FRED stuff has several years of background, and honestly, I think is the right thing to do. It really relegates the whole IDT to a 'we don't even use this at all, unless you have legacy segment selectors'. Good riddance to a truly horrid thing that goes back to a truly disgusting CPU architecture: the 80286," He said.

Come on, Linus, stop pulling your punches. In all seriousness, Torvalds also explained that AMD developed its own workaround for the shortcomings of IDT. Comparing the two approaches, he says, "Both are valid on their own, and they are actually fairly independent."

"FRED is very clearly defined to have an entirely new model, and any OS vendor that goes that way will still have to support the legacy exception model for older CPU's. The point being that the FRED exception handling is much simpler, but it's entirely separate code and logic, explicitly bolted to the side in the hope that the original code and logic can be removed entirely some day.

"In contrast, the AMD model is meant to very explicitly interface with existing code, and just allow people to avoid the fragile (and sometimes expensive) hacks and workarounds they already have. So they actually have very little overlap," he says.

Torvalds then concludes, "I think the Intel version is better if you think that x86-64 should actually survive longer-term, and you actually want to improve exception handling and speed things up (the 'F' historically stood for 'Fast', I'm not sure why they've apparently renamed it 'Flexible')," all of which provides intriguing insight.

Now, arguably, the idea that Zen 6 will be a major architectural step doesn't entirely align with previous generations of Zen CPUs. AMD has thus far tended to restrict major redesigns of Zen to every other architecture. Zen 1, Zen 3 and Zen 5 are the fully or substantially new architectures by that narrative, with Zen 2 and Zen 4 more minor updates. On that schedule, Zen 7 would be the next big redesign.

Still, not only is that characterisation of AMD's Zen architectures open to interpretation, it's no guarantee that AMD hasn't gone for a bigger upgrade than usual for an even-numbered Zen generation. Whatever, we should find out more later this year when AMD is expected to release its next-gen Zen 6-based processors.

Intel has been keen to talk up the benefits of XeSS 3 and multi-frame generation in recent months, alongside the launch of its very impressive Panther Lake mobile chips and their powerful iGPUs. However, as things currently stand, it's only officially supported on systems with Xe3-cored graphics chips—i.e. Panther Lake only.

Intel says support for older GPUs is on its way, but that hasn't stopped several Redditors from messing around with Intel's latest graphics drivers—and apparently it's surprisingly easy to enable XeSS 3 on most Intel graphics chips right now (via Sweclockers). A quick bit of file swapping seems to do the trick, and commenters are reporting the benefits of multi-frame generation on both the Intel Arc B580 and Arc A770 desktop GPUs, among others.

Comment from r/IntelArc

To enable XeSS 3 on older Intel chips, the methodology goes as follows: Extract the latest Intel driver to a folder of your choosing, copy igxell.dl and igxess_fg.dll from folder 8362 and paste/overwrite to folder 8452, remove your current graphics drivers with Display Driver Uninstaller, and install the new ones from your modified folder.

I don't have an Intel GPU in front of me to test with at the moment, so I'll add the usual proviso that your mileage may vary, and that it might be better to wait for an official release if you're unsure of what you're doing. Still, it seems to have worked for plenty of commenters in the thread, and wiping your GPU drivers if anything goes wrong is usually a pretty simple procedure.

It's also worth noting that any frame gen-enhanced performance gains will likely be lesser for older hardware, and you'll still need a decent base frame rate to get the most out of it, like all forms of multi-frame generation.

That being said, redditor F9-0021 reports that the base frame rate isn't as much of an issue as expected on their A370m machine in Cyberpunk 2077, although enabling multi-frame generation has certainly been hard on their mobile GPU:

"It's way more taxing on the XMX units than I was expecting, dropping me from the 40s with only upscaling, to the high 30s with 2x, to the low 20s with 4x," says the redditor. "The poor little ACM-G11 can't keep up, though it's not super surprising in retrospect.

"Normally with Nvidia frame gen, I'd consider 30 fps the lowest you could go, but only with a controller. I'm not going to lie, XeSS-FG is still going to be completely unplayable at that framerate on mouse and keyboard, but on controller it feels fine. If you gave this to me blind, I'd probably think it was running at 35-40 fps raster.

"I'm going from 20-24 to 80-92 fps, though it really looks more like 50-60 with the frame pacing issues. Hopefully that's something that can be sorted for the official release. Even if it isn't, it's still an incredible achievement."

Again, pinch of salt, your mileage may vary, etc etc. Still, it looks to be something of a red letter day for those running older Intel GPUs, and that's pleasing to see. Intel drivers have often been patchy in our experience, but the company now says they're "light years ahead of where we were a few years ago". And in this case, perhaps several months ahead of their own official driver release.

It's only been *checks watch* less than a day, and already Intel's Panther Lake is seeing some promising airtime. That's not just from the likes of publications such as yours truly, but also, it seems, from games, as the Arc B390 is now featured on the official Forza Horizon 6 system requirements.

That's a game that's pencilled for a summertime launch (May 19), and as of now, there are only minimum requirements listed. On the GPU front, this means an Nvidia GTX 1650, AMD RX 6500 XT, Intel Arc A380 or Arc B390.

Note that the B390 is an integrated GPU. The other entries on that list are discrete graphics cards. In other words, if we needed even more confirmation that Panther Lake is capable of bringing the fight to the discrete market, here it is.

Intel's new Panther Lake mobile platform has kicked up quite the beneficent storm, offering what seems like a solitary ray of sunshine through the fog of 2026's prices and broader lack of exciting launches.

Our Andy's Intel Core Ultra X9 388H testing speaks for itself on this front, but I'll reiterate the main thrust: The 12 Xe3-core Arc B390 iGPU is leaps ahead of its main Strix Point competition, and it isn't massively far behind the RTX 4050 mobile, a still pretty modern discrete GPU. And battery life is, of course, fantastic.

Intel Arc B390 1080p gaming benchmarks

No upscaling

Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium)Black Myth Wukong (Medium)F1 24 (Medium)Horizon Zero Dawn (Original)Metro Exodus Enhanced Ed. (High)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

64

52

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

41

35

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

33

27

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

81

56

0255075100

Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	64 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	41 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	33 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	81 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

39

31

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

23

20

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

17

14

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

53

44

015304560

Black Myth Wukong (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	39 Avg FPS, 31 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	23 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	17 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	53 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

113

100

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

74

65

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

155

108

050100150200

F1 24 (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	113 Avg FPS, 100 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	74 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	N/A
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	155 Avg FPS, 108 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

82

58

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

54

12

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

37

20

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

111

60

037.575112.5150

Horizon Zero Dawn (Original) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	82 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	54 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	37 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	111 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

49

33

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

27

7

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

27

18

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

43

30

015304560

Metro Exodus Enhanced Ed. (High) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	49 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	27 Avg FPS, 7 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	27 Avg FPS, 18 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	43 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS

It's also worth taking a step back from the comparative stuff and reflecting on the simple fact that we're now seeing integrated graphics listed as a requirement for what's sure to be a very good-looking upcoming AAA game. If you've played Forza Horizon 5, you'll know that while it's not particularly tough to run, it's no simple indie side-scroller either.

The game is set for launch on 19 May, and in addition to the B390 requirement, it will also require an Intel Core i5 8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 or better, as well as an SSD and 16 GB of your finest overpriced RAM. An Intel PTL chip featuring B390 iGPU will, of course, suffice too.

Fast, feisty, fabulous. That's how I described the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H in my review, and I stand by it. It's got an Arc B390 iGPU that crushes all the others we've tested for gaming performance, and that's a remarkable technical achievement given the size of the graphics tile relative to the rest of the chip.

But there's a significant caveat hanging over the Intel Arc B390, and it goes like this: it's very, very quick—for an iGPU. Sure, it's capable of delivering gaming laptop-like performance, but compare it to any discrete mobile GPU of the current generation and the little graphics tile's limits are quickly revealed.

Now, none of this is meant to cast shade upon the considerable achievement of Intel's engineers. No one was expecting its new mobile graphics hardware to compete with, say, anything from the RTX 50-series.

In fact, Intel claims the Core Ultra X9 388H is 10% faster at gaming (on average) than a lappy with an RTX 4050 mobile. And, if you squint closely at those claims, you'll see that they were made in reference to a 60 W gaming laptop, with '2x upscaling' enabled.

Again, that's still fairly impressive for an iGPU, particularly as the Core Ultra X9 388H machine was claimed to be using 45 W for the whole shebang during those tests. But in reality, a low-wattage RTX 4050 mobile isn't particularly quick by modern standards.

Intel Arc B390 1080p gaming benchmarks

No upscaling

Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium)Black Myth Wukong (Medium)F1 24 (Medium)Horizon Zero Dawn (Original)Metro Exodus Enhanced Ed. (High)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

64

52

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

41

35

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

33

27

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

81

56

0255075100

Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	64 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	41 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	33 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	81 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

39

31

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

23

20

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

17

14

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

53

44

015304560

Black Myth Wukong (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	39 Avg FPS, 31 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	23 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	17 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	53 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

113

100

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

74

65

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

155

108

050100150200

F1 24 (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	113 Avg FPS, 100 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	74 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	N/A
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	155 Avg FPS, 108 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

82

58

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

54

12

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

37

20

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

111

60

037.575112.5150

Horizon Zero Dawn (Original) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	82 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	54 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	37 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	111 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

49

33

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

27

7

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

27

18

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

43

30

015304560

Metro Exodus Enhanced Ed. (High) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	49 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	27 Avg FPS, 7 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	27 Avg FPS, 18 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	43 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS

And if you up the GPU wattage to something you might find in a regular entry-level machine (75 W, in the case of our Acer Nitro V 15 test laptop), Nvidia's last-gen lowest-tier graphics hardware pulls significantly ahead in most of our benchmarks.

We don't include frame generation in our iGPU test suite, but we do run the numbers again with Quality upscaling enabled. And yes, the Intel iGPU is remarkably quick compared to its direct competition, particularly with some XeSS enhancement. But stick it up against a budget, previous-gen gaming laptop with a half-decent dose of juice, and it does have a tendency to come unstuck.

Intel Arc B390 1080p upscaled gaming benchmarks

Upscaling set to Quality

Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium)Black Myth Wukong (Medium)F1 24 (Medium)Horizon Zero Dawn (Original)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

92

60

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

53

45

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

40

33

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

110

63

037.575112.5150

Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	92 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	53 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	40 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	110 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

57

43

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

36

29

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

30

23

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

81

63

0255075100

Black Myth Wukong (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	57 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	36 Avg FPS, 29 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	30 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	81 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

141

126

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

80

65

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

150

85

037.575112.5150

F1 24 (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	141 Avg FPS, 126 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	80 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	N/A
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	150 Avg FPS, 85 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

94

67

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

77

12

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

37

20

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

116

83

037.575112.5150

Horizon Zero Dawn (Original) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	94 Avg FPS, 67 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	77 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	37 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	116 Avg FPS, 83 1% Low FPS

Again, this isn't to cast doubt against Intel's claims, nor do I aim to put too much of a dampener on all the excitement surrounding Panther Lake's performance. Believe me, I'm excited too. But it is important to view the Arc B390 iGPU in context. And it must be said, when compared to most modern mobile graphics chips, it's still off the pace for the most part.

But the advantages of gaining a genuine dose of graphics grunt in a single chip are, nonetheless, legion. It means that productivity-style, slim and sleek gaming laptops making use of high-end Panther Lake chips can realistically be called gaming laptops in their own right, even without any dedicated, off-chip hardware to handle the demanding stuff.

Never mind the power efficiency gains. I spent a day at the office with a charger-less Panther Lake test machine, and came away massively impressed. Without a dGPU onboard, and with huge efficiencies made to the way the new Intel chips handle their power load, I managed roughly 11 hours away from the wall socket, with 18% battery left to spare. And yes, that included some light gaming on the train.

The Intel Core Ultra Series 3 chips are made of remarkable stuff, that's clear to see. I can't wait to see what happens when one (or something similar to what we've currently seen) ends up in a gaming handheld, as this sort of performance in combination with its low-power tendencies seems like a recipe for a truly excellent handheld gaming machine.

But should you want one in your next gaming laptop? Perhaps not, if cutting-edge performance is your aim. And I haven't even mentioned price yet.

My Asus Zenbook Duo test machine will likely retail for $2,000+ (US pricing is yet to be confirmed, although the UK version starts at $2,300). Granted, it's a dual-OLED equipped marvel, so traditional lappys featuring Intel's new B390-equipped chips will likely be cheaper. But even if that knocks $500, perhaps even $800 off the price, anything from our under-$1,000 gaming laptop deals list is likely to run rings around it for raw gaming performance.

Once more, for good measure: I am thoroughly impressed with Intel's new chip. But if you're on a budget, or you're not too fussed about all-day battery life and still want high frame rates in the latest games, it's still a discrete GPU-equipped machine that should be near the top of your shopping list.

Traditional gaming laptops don't have too much to fear from Panther Lake, I reckon—but they do have some new competition in town with some clear benefits, and that's worth celebrating. I'll stop being too much of a downer now, I promise.

I've just wrapped up my benchmarking of the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H, or more commonly-known to most of you at this point, the top-end Intel Panther Lake mobile chip. It's a feisty little beast, with iGPU performance that feels very close to what you might expect from an entry-level, discrete GPU-equipped gaming laptop—and that gives me hope for a clutch of super-fast handhelds on the horizon.

Intel remains tight-lipped regarding handheld implementations of its impressive new chips, with the only word I've heard on the matter being something shown to the public "soon". So, I'm left with little but speculation for now. Still, we can have fun dreaming together, can't we?

Handheld gaming PCs are currently in a bit of a weird space, as far as I'm concerned. Sure, there are plenty to choose from, but it's quite telling that the Steam Deck still crops up with regularity as one of the top recommendations.

Its APU is really starting to show its age in 2026, and while it still makes a fantastic value proposition, I'd primarily recommend it as an indie gaming machine if you're looking for smooth performance. Much faster handhelds are available, of course—but with so many demanding games on the market, you still have to be pretty careful with the minimum specs requirements before committing your gaming experience to the truly-portable life.

The closest I've come to experiencing truly impressive frame rates out of a handheld was, funnily enough, during my previous testing of the MSI Claw 8 AI+, which features an Intel Lunar Lake chip running underneath the hood.

Intel Arc B390 1080p upscaled gaming benchmarks

Upscaling set to Quality

Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium)Black Myth Wukong (Medium)F1 24 (Medium)Horizon Zero Dawn (Original)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

92

60

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

53

45

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

40

33

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

110

63

037.575112.5150

Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	92 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	53 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	40 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	110 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

57

43

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

36

29

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

30

23

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

81

63

0255075100

Black Myth Wukong (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	57 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	36 Avg FPS, 29 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	30 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	81 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

141

126

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

80

65

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

150

85

037.575112.5150

F1 24 (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	141 Avg FPS, 126 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	80 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	N/A
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	150 Avg FPS, 85 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

94

67

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

77

12

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

37

20

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

116

83

037.575112.5150

Horizon Zero Dawn (Original) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	94 Avg FPS, 67 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	77 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	37 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	116 Avg FPS, 83 1% Low FPS

The Intel Arc 140V was certainly impressive at the time, but now I know it can be thoroughly trounced by the Arc B390 found in several Panther Lake chips at equivalent wattages, I can't wait for the new iGPU be crammed inside a handheld chassis. It's remarkably quick on its feet, in a way that feels downright futuristic when compared to its direct competition.

There's also the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, of course, which makes use of AMD's Ryzen Z2 Extreme to great effect. It's a fair few frames faster than the Claw, on average—but looking at the performance delta between the new Core Ultra X9 chip and its laptop-based equivalents, I can't help but wonder what its Arc B390 iGPU could do when limited to a similar TDP.

There's a fly in the ointment, though, and I'll ask you to hold your groans—it's the potential price tag. Yes, 2026 is a year in which we'll be complaining about the rising MSRPs of all sorts of hardware (mostly due to the ongoing RAMpocalypse), but high-end handhelds were already a pretty expensive proposition before the DRAM market imploded with horrific results.

The Claw 8 AI+ retails for around $900, while the Asus/Xbox machine commands an imposing $1,000 MSRP. Nothing I've seen so far indicates that laptops featuring the top-end Intel chips will be cheap, and given the performance advantage they're likely to provide, I can't imagine that handhelds making use of the Arc B390 iGPU will be any better.

Rumours suggest that Intel will eventually release a handheld-specific chip with the full-fat 12 Xe3-core specced iGPU on board, supposedly called the Intel Core G3 Extreme. It's said to have lower clock speeds, with a couple of cores lopped off for good measure, but I still can't imagine it'll show up in anything but the most premium of handheld models.

So, perhaps I should temper my expectations. Any Panther Lake-based handheld will likely come with a hefty price tag, and that's enough to ruin anyone's fantasy gaming scenario. There's always the 10 Xe3-cored Arc B370 iGPU found in some of the lesser-specced Core Ultra Series 3 chips, I suppose, but even that's likely to cost a pretty penny if it makes it into a handheld format.

Still, if Intel's new chips really can kick the top end of the market into high gear, perhaps it won't be too long before slightly crunchy handheld gaming performance becomes a mid-range to budget expectation, rather than the norm for most.

A humble hardware writer can dream, can't they?

You've read my breakdown on the architecture behind Intel's new Panther Lake processors. You've gone through every graphics benchmark that Andy has done with the range-topping Core Ultra X9 388H. Between the two of them, you've now decided that your next gaming laptop is going to be Panther Lake-powered and sport a big GPU from Nvidia, to go with Intel's big Xe3 tile. You're possibly going to be disappointed, then, to know that you're almost certainly not going to see any such lappies coming to market.

The reason why is quite simple: it all comes down to the number of available PCIe lanes in the platform controller tile. Intel has two variants of this chiplet: one with 12 lanes (four are Gen 5, eight are Gen 4) and the other with 20 lanes (eight Gen 4, twelve Gen 5). The important thing, though, is that every Core Ultra 300-series processor that has the big 12-core Xe3 iGPU uses the 12-lane platform controller tile.

AMD and Nvidia's mobile GPUs are designed to use at least eight PCIe lanes. That doesn't mean you can't fit a discrete GPU alongside a 12-lane PTL chip; it's just that it will leave just four for everything else inside the laptop. The majority of NVMe SSDs require four lanes, and you obviously need a storage drive, so that's all the lanes gone.

While those dGPUs can operate with fewer, it's not something that laptop vendors are likely to explore, because it would be leaving performance on the table. Not very much, granted, but you wouldn't have the issue with the 4-core Xe3 PTL variants, or Intel's Arrow Lake mobile chips, or AMD's Ryzen processors, either.

Even if you used all eight Gen 4 lanes for a dGPU, that would leave just four lanes behind, which an NVMe SSD would swallow up. With no other PCIe lanes available, there would be scope for a second M.2 slot, and more importantly, no Thunderbolt 4 ports in the laptop (as these also use four PCIe lanes each).

However, Panther Lake does offer quite a bit of flexibility when it comes to the configuration of the 12 PCIe lanes in the Core Ultra X9 388H. The four Gen 5 can be used as x4 or two lots of x2. Those eight Gen 4 lanes are actually two bundles of four, and each of those can be set up as one x4, two x2, or four x1.

Which means, theoretically, one could have a dGPU using the four Gen 5 lanes, and then having the M.2 slots and Thunderbolt ports just get by with two lanes. But that's far too messy to be dealing with, when a laptop manufacturer can just go with a 4-core Xe3 PTL processor, a discrete GPU, and still have plenty of lanes left over.

I think Intel has missed a trick here. If it used the 20 PCIe lane platform controller tile across all Panther Lake SKUs, then these pocket rockets would be on par with the obvious competition: AMD's Ryzen AI 300 and 400-series.

These all sport an iGPU of varying sizes and are happy to be paired with a discrete graphics chip. Leaving Strix Halo aside for the moment, the top-of-the-pack Ryzen AI 9 HX 475 has a Radeon 890M iGPU, with 16 RDNA 3.5 compute units, roughly 33% fewer shaders than the 12-core Xe3 tile, and it sports 16 Gen 4 PCIe lanes.

Eight of those will be taken up by a dGPU, of course, but that still leaves plenty of lanes left over for two M.2 slots. Since the APU itself natively hosts two USB4 ports, you don't need to worry about having some spare lanes to attach fast peripherals.

Admittedly, with every gaming laptop I've ever used, I've never once felt the need to use the iGPU if it had a decent dGPU. Some laptops will switch between the two to save power in desktop mode, but you don't need a 12-core Xe3 iGPU to watch a movie or do battle with a large spreadsheet.

So while a daring laptop manufacturer could shoehorn a Core Ultra X9 388H together with a mobile RTX 5080, you're probably just going to see a horde of 'little Xe3' variants instead. When AMD is able to offer you the best of both worlds, it's a shame that Intel can't or won't as well.

Gaming laptop battery life is, by and large, rubbish. Or rather, trying to use a gaming-capable machine for a full day of work without charging it is, err, rubbish. I've hauled many discrete GPU-equipped lappys into the office for a spot of real-world testing, and most of them are usually begging to be plugged into a wall socket by lunchtime.

Upon hearing Intel's battery life efficiency claims for its new, Panther Lake-based, Core Ultra Series 3 chips, I knew what needed to be done. Top up my Asus Zenbook Duo review sample overnight, take it on my round trip from my Southampton home to PC Gamer Towers in Bath (a roughly 126 mile jaunt), use it for a regular day, and record when it conks out.

It's a dGPU-less machine, which means all the graphics hardware is contained onboard the single Core Ultra X9 388H chip at its heart. Despite this, the built-in Arc B390 iGPU delivers some impressive gaming performance for its size, meaning that laptops powered by Intel's new mobile chips (the ones with chonky iGPUs, anyway) can now reasonably be called gaming laptops.

Intel says that Core Ultra Series 3 machines can boast up to 27-hour battery life, but my Asus sample is a bit different. It's got dual OLED displays for a start, which means my testing had to take into account the uniqueness of the particular design. I resolved myself to only use the extra screen for demonstration purposes and the odd photo shoot, to try and gain an indicative figure of what you might expect from a more regularly-formatted laptop.

Which, according to Asus, should give me a maximum battery figure of 18 hours+ under ideal conditions. Setting off on the train that morning, though, I wasn't too confident. I'd initially planned to leave the tiny USB-C charging brick at home, but a last minute panic meant I threw it in the bottom of my bag anyway. Call if a lack of faith, if you will.

I started out by checking my emails using the terrible on-train Wi-Fi, along with a news search for our regular coverage. This involves multiple tabs, browser windows, and the odd bit of YouTube watching. Arriving at the office around two hours later, I anxiously checked the battery indicator.

92%. A pretty good start for the Panther Lake lappy, although roughly what I expected. Brandishing the shiny new machine in front of my colleagues, it was then briefly handed around the group for some cooing and cawing. The dual screens were flipped open and fiddled with, and the magnetically-attached keyboard was enthusiastically pulled on and off—causing the OLED displays to power up and down in quick succession.

More doubts entered my mind. I still had a full eight-hour working day in front of me, and I was planning to finish off with some light gaming on the journey home. Could this power-efficient machine, even with a 99 Whr battery system, really run the distance?

As is the way when you get your head down at work, I soon forgot about my battery anxiety. I set to work typing up my performance testing piece, attending video meetings, and juggling multiple windows and tabs. While I wouldn't describe myself as a power user in the traditional sense (I'm not 3D modelling or spending all day in Photoshop, for example), my role involves a whole lot of multitasking—and the PTL chip cruised through every demand I asked of it with ease.

By lunchtime, after roughly four hours of near-constant usage, I was down to around 70%. My mood improved immensely at this point, as it was clear that the lappy's battery was relatively unbothered with my usual work routine. Merrily, I skipped into Bath for an overpriced sandwich.

However, my post-lunch afternoon was about to provide a more demanding test. Heading down to our studio, I used the Asus machine as a note provider for a chat with my hardware overlord, Dave, about the new Panther Lake chips, before capturing some B-roll footage and photos with our peerless video team.

Again, those dual OLEDs were booted into life, with the brightness boosted for an accurate capture. I thought about all the tech running inside my charger-denied sample.

Twin 1800p OLEDs, blazing away in front of me as the laptop rotated on a motorised plinth. 16 CPU cores, albeit with Low-Power Efficient versions taking the lead on battery power alone. Perhaps I should start closing some tabs and background apps to even the odds a little?

I resisted. This was a real-world test, and while the dual-screen design of this laptop skews the data a little, I was still curious as to the capabilities of the Asus machine itself.

Back to the office, and back to my review. More tabs, more multitasking, more heads-down typing. A glance out the window revealed darkness, which meant my journey back on the train was soon to begin. Finishing up my day, I slipped the laptop into my backpack with just over 40% battery remaining. Pretty good going, but the gaming test was yet to come.

The Arc B390 iGPU is a very capable little graphics cruncher, but I knew that booting up something truly demanding, like Cyberpunk 2077, would likely be a battery-draining mistake. There's no room for a mouse and keyboard setup in most seats on a British train, anyway, so I went for an old, trackpad-friendly favourite—Civilisation VI.

What do you mean there's a new one? I hadn't heard. Anyway, Civ's relatively undemanding needs were well-catered for by the Panther Lake chip, even at 1800p, and the battery life needle barely moved. No great surprise there. Norland was much the same. I began to wonder if my gaming testing was really representative.

Lightweight games are the sort of thing I usually play while travelling, but most iGPUs would cope without tanking the battery too hard.

So I booted up Hitman World of Assassination instead. Wandering around the streets of Marrakesh and making a nuisance of myself, I kept an eye on the battery indicator. At 1080p Medium settings, some rough maths revealed a loss of 5% battery life every 10 minutes.

Gulp. Still, I kept playing the bald-man-goes-wild simulator until my journey was over, snapped the lid of the Asus machine shut, and stuffed it into my bag for the walk home from the station. Returning to my digs, I opened the laptop with a heavy heart. Surely my 3D gaming excursions had left it with nothing but a blank screen and a desperate need for a top up?

Nope. I was left with 18% battery remaining. I could have kept playing Hitman for another half an hour, or easily got some more work done once I'd returned home without reaching for the charging plug.

For those of you with ultra-efficient, productivity-style laptops in your possession, the idea of all-day battery life is far from a new one. But from a gaming laptop, it's a rare sight. It's also an impressive indication of just how efficient Intel's new chips are when subjected to all the rigours one might throw at them over a long day, and how well the Core Ultra X9 388H handles its power management.

I could have realistically left the Asus machine's power brick at home, and not worried once about making it back with battery life to spare. And while we're not quite at the point where laptops are capable of delivering truly phenomenal gaming battery life, I think my testing is a pretty good indication that we're well on our way.

My usage adds up to around 11 hours total, give or take. And while that might not seem too impressive at first glance, the fact I had nearly 1/5th of the battery remaining after a full day, including nearly two hours of gaming time, has made me rethink what I expect from a gaming machine's portable potential.

Intel's Arc B390-equipped chips will rightly gain plenty of accolades for their iGPU gaming performance—but when it comes to legacy, it might be the battery life that cements their place in the hardware hall of fame.

Panther Lake has finally arrived on my test bench. Well, the chip "formerly codenamed" Panther Lake, anyway. Intel would much prefer we refer to its new chip generation as the Intel Core Ultra Series 3—which is the name you'll find emblazoned on the specs sheet of many thin and light laptops in the next few months. And maybe the odd handheld eventually, too.

The headline news here is the gaming performance, as Intel has supercharged the onboard iGPU of several of its new chips to provide a sizable whack of graphics grunt. I've been testing an Asus Zenbook Duo equipped with the very tippety-top of the lineup, the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H, complete with a 12 Xe3 core-equipped Intel Arc B390 iGPU. One thing has become immediately obvious—it's a surprisingly grunty graphics cruncher when pushed to its limits.

Now, some expectation-tempering before we start. As an iGPU, the Arc B390 onboard the Core Ultra X9 388H amounts to a single, somewhat-sizable graphics tile, with 12 Xe3 cores, 12 Ray Tracing Units, 96 Xe Vector Engines and XMX engines respectively, and 16 MB of L2 cache. That's an impressive specs sheet for an integrated GPU, but compared to your average discrete unit, it's very, very small scale.

So, no-one's expecting the Arc B390 to do battle with, say, the RTX 5060 mobile found in many modern budget gaming laptops. Intel, though, is claiming the chip is around 10% faster at gaming than a 60 W-limited RTX 4050 mobile machine on average, and that's a very modest slice of hardware to beat in 2026.

What we should be excited about, however, is what those claims mean for sleek and slim, productivity-style, dGPU-less laptops that could almost now be classed as gaming laptops. Compress some genuine gaming performance into a single mobile chip, and you could potentially end up with a wealth of svelte, light-as-a-feather mobile machines that can handle a bit of Cyberpunk 2077 on the side.

Not to mention handhelds, the first of which I am assured will be revealed "soon". We can but dream. Anyway, on with the testing.

Intel Arc B390 iGPU benchmarks

For the purpose of direct comparison with our other iGPUs, the Lunar Lake-generation Intel Arc 140V and the Strix Point-based AMD Radeon 890M, I've recorded all my real-world gaming results at 1080p, with varying settings indicated in the charts below.

Kicking things off with Cyberpunk 2077, I already had a good idea what to expect. I got a chance to perform some quick and dirty benchmarking of the Arc B390 at CES 2026, and recorded a 53 fps average result at 1200p High settings with upscaling disabled. However, dropping CP2077 down to Medium settings (and the aforementioned 1080p res) results in a very healthy 64 fps average. I was pretty impressed back in Vegas, but now? I'm downright stoked.

Intel Arc B390 1080p gaming benchmarks

No upscaling

Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium)Black Myth Wukong (Medium)F1 24 (Medium)Horizon Zero Dawn (Original)Metro Exodus Enhanced Ed. (High)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

64

52

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

41

35

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

33

27

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

81

56

0255075100

Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	64 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	41 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	33 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	81 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

39

31

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

23

20

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

17

14

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

53

44

015304560

Black Myth Wukong (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	39 Avg FPS, 31 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	23 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	17 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	53 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

113

100

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

74

65

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

155

108

050100150200

F1 24 (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	113 Avg FPS, 100 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	74 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	N/A
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	155 Avg FPS, 108 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

82

58

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

54

12

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

37

20

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

111

60

037.575112.5150

Horizon Zero Dawn (Original) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	82 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	54 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	37 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	111 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

49

33

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

27

7

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

27

18

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

43

30

015304560

Metro Exodus Enhanced Ed. (High) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	49 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	27 Avg FPS, 7 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	27 Avg FPS, 18 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	43 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS

Compared to the Lunar Lake and Strix Point iGPUs, the Arc B390 delivers the sort of results that look like… well, the figures you might expect from a "proper" graphics chip. It puts out nearly twice the frame rate of both iGPUs across my test suite, with similarly impressive numbers in the 1% lows.

Taking a closer look at the Black Myth: Wukong chart, it's not quite as easy of a ride for the Arc B390. Still, a 39 fps average without upscaling is definitely playable, whereas the Radeon 890M and Arc 140V deliver nothing but crunch by comparison, with 23 and 17 fps average results respectively. Still, Horizon Zero Dawn reveals a massive performance jump over its iGPU rivals, with the B390 managing to stay 28 frames ahead over its Strix Point rival, and a massive 45 frames ahead of its elder sibling.

However, at this point I'm sure you've noticed the RTX 4050 gaming laptop lurking at the bottom of my charts, consistently making all of our iGPUs look a little silly.

Now, before we go crying in our respective soups, it's worth mentioning that the Acer Nitro V 15 results were recorded with a 75 W variant of Nvidia's previous gen entry-level mobile GPU, which is 15 watts higher than the entire Nvidia system in Intel's test figures—so looking at them in direct comparison is perhaps a little unfair.

That being said, I've included it as an example of what sort of gaming performance you can expect from a budget gaming laptop at similar settings—and it turns out, it's usually quite a bit more than the top-end Intel Core Ultra Series 3 iGPU can provide on its own.

Intel's "similar performance to [an] Nvidia 4050 laptop" claims are also based on a different set of benches (with different settings) over a much wider suite of games. Still, when it comes to our specific testing suite, it's clear that a relatively low-wattage RTX 4050 (its full TGP can be up to 115 W) is still capable of throwing even the fastest iGPUs in the mud in many scenarios.

However, the Nvidia GPU doesn't have it all its own way, as evidenced by the Metro Exodus: Enhanced results. The little Arc manages to beat not just its iGPU competition, but even the RTX 4050, here by six frames on average. And while that isn't a massive performance gain, it's notable as the only example in my 1080p gaming benchmarks where the B390 pulls ahead of its discrete competition.

With Quality upscaling enabled, the Arc B390 delivers a very respectable 57 fps in BM:W, whereas its competition lags behind around the 30-33 fps mark. Again, that's the difference between pretty smooth, and pretty crunchy. Or what I'd call good gaming performance, rather than acceptable.

Intel Arc B390 1080p upscaled gaming benchmarks

Upscaling set to Quality

Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium)Black Myth Wukong (Medium)F1 24 (Medium)Horizon Zero Dawn (Original)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

92

60

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

53

45

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

40

33

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

110

63

037.575112.5150

Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	92 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	53 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	40 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	110 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

57

43

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

36

29

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

30

23

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

81

63

0255075100

Black Myth Wukong (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	57 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	36 Avg FPS, 29 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	30 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	81 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

141

126

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

80

65

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

150

85

037.575112.5150

F1 24 (Medium) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	141 Avg FPS, 126 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	80 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	N/A
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	150 Avg FPS, 85 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

94

67

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

77

12

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

37

20

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

116

83

037.575112.5150

Horizon Zero Dawn (Original) Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	94 Avg FPS, 67 1% Low FPS
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	77 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	37 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	116 Avg FPS, 83 1% Low FPS

Cyberpunk 2077 leaps to a 92 fps average, which is a pretty phenomenal result for a dGPU-less machine—although here comes the RTX 4050 to spoil the party with a 110 fps result. It's worth mentioning, though, that there's only a three fps difference in minimum frames between the two, so in terms of real-world gameplay, you'd likely struggle to tell the difference.

Another noticeable discrepancy lies in Horizon Zero Dawn, where the budget, previous generation Nvidia mobile GPU puts out a remarkably good 116 fps average. The Arc B390 still puts in an impressive showing of 94 fps, beating the 77 fps and 37 fps averages of the Radeon 890M and Arc 140V with headroom to spare, but it's still indicative of a substantial performance difference no matter which way you look at it.

Horizon Zero Dawn has a vast draw distance, and its performance has a tendency to hinge on reading and writing lots of pixel information, so I'd wager that what we're seeing here (and in some of my other results) is a memory bandwidth limitation for the iGPUs in comparison to the RTX 4050 Mobile.

The Intel chip, for example, is sharing LPDDR5X with the rest of the system, whereas the Nvidia chip has its own 192 GB/s GDDR6 to play with over a 96-bit bus.

That's a relatively narrow data highway for a GPU, but it's still got a significant amount more memory bandwidth to play with than any current integrated chip, including the Arc B390, which theoretically tops out at 74 GB/s. Still, a 94 fps average result in a still-fantastic-looking game in 2026? Yep, I'd say the B390 has done very well here.

Intel Arc B390 synthetic benchmarks

GPU index score

3DMark Time Spy

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

7192

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

3674

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

3744

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

8277

02,5005,0007,50010,000

GPU index

3DMark Time Spy Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	7192
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	3674
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	3744
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	8277

And then there's 3DMark Time Spy. I was expecting a pretty high GPU score for the Intel chip, but I'll admit I had to double check the reviewers guide to make sure I hadn't screwed something up. A 7192 GPU index result is pretty darn fantastic, and casts a very long shadow over both the AMD and the previous-gen Intel iGPU. It's not that far behind the RTX 4050 mobile, either, even with its considerable wattage advantage.

Now, the cynic in me (and I have to admit, I'm mostly cynic) would say that we've seen previous Intel chips perform surprisingly well in 3DMark benchmarks before. Intel's various architectures seem to respond well to the challenge UL's benchmarks put in front of them, so I wouldn't necessarily take those numbers as a singular indication of performance overall. Still, it's an impressive figure, and one that Intel can wear with pride.

Gaming battery life results

50% display brightness, Bluetooth disabled, Balanced power mode

PCMark 10 gaming battery life test

Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)

146

Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)

70

Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)

155

RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)

92

050100150200

Battery life (Mins)

PCMark 10 gaming battery life test Data

Product	Value
Intel Arc B390 (Asus Zenbook Duo)	146
Radeon 890M (Asus Zephyrus G16)	70
Intel Arc 140V (Asus Zenbook S 14)	155
RTX 4050 Mobile (75 W, Acer Nitro V 15)	92

Looking at my gaming battery life figures, it's interesting to note that the Panther Lake chip drains the Asus Zenbook Duo's 99 Wh dual-cell battery system nine minutes faster than the Lunar Lake chip in the 75 Whr Asus Zenbook S 14.

However, given the performance difference between the two, I'd say a 40 W average throughout the test is an impressively low power draw for such a chip, and there are many differences between the two systems that could account for that slightly lower figure.

Certainly, in real world usage I've been massively impressed by the Zenbook Duo's battery life, as it managed a full day of working and light gaming with power to spare. Is this chip feeling like the future yet, or is that just me?

Panther Lake gaming performance: Analysis

Throughout my testing, I've had to keep reminding myself that I'm benchmarking an iGPU, a relatively small tile integrated into a relatively small chip. As Intel has been keen to point out during my many technical demonstrations at CES, the Arc B390 is large by iGPU standards. But hold a Core Ultra Series 3 chip in your hands, and the scale of Intel's achievement becomes obvious.

It's a tiny slip of a GPU when compared to anything other than its most direct competition. And, as I've shown with my results, it gives the Radeon 890M and Arc 140V a thorough thrashing in any gaming-related task you can throw at it. Intel has pulled off something of a magic trick here—the Arc B390 represents not just a major leap towards proper gaming performance springing from a single, CPU-inclusive die, but perhaps its actual arrival.

While a proper modern dGPU— even an entry level one—will likely streak ahead in most benchmarks, the Arc B390 has enough chutzpah to feel like one in real world usage. And that, my friends, is a pretty stonking technical achievement.

The last question, and perhaps the most important, comes down to cost. The Asus machine I have in front of me has a £2,300+ price tag (US pricing is yet to be confirmed), and being a dual-OLED equipped ultrabook, that's perhaps no surprise.

Still, I've got my doubts about this particular top-end chip appearing in machines that actually make sense as potential gaming laptop replacements, given the MSRP they're likely to be saddled with.

But the Intel Core Ultra X7 368H, a 16-core variant with the Arc B390 onboard? That leaps off the SKU list as a more affordable solution. And let's not rule out the Core Ultra 5 338H, either, a 12-core PTL chip with the Intel Arc B370, which looks a lot like the B390 but with two fewer Xe3 cores.

We'll be testing one of those the second the opportunity arises, but in the meantime, the top-end iGPU I have in front of me has certainly set some very high standards.

So, is the Intel Arc B390 the iGPU of my dreams? Well, it's pretty damn close. Certainly, I've been very impressed with the results I've found to date, and while the affordability of devices using the chip is still a large, looming question, I can't help but admire its moxie.

Do I want one in my next dGPU-less machine? Yes, absolutely. My next handheld? Certainly. My next dedicated gaming laptop? Perhaps not, if sub-$1,000 entry level machines are still a thing once the current RAMpocalypse has finished trashing the PC hardware market.

Still, the Intel iGPU feels like a quantum leap forward for integrated graphics hardware, and for that I have to applaud it. Fast, feisty, and fabulous? Oh yes—this Panther's got bite.

Intel has had a rocky few years, but it believes 18A, its latest manufacturing process, and Panther Lake, its new chip generation, are so special that it will make an entirely new Intel.

That's all according to Intel's Q4 earnings call, where CFO David Zinsner said, "2025 demonstrated the staying power of the x86 ecosystem across client and datacenter, and the importance of our manufacturing assets as we launched Core Ultra Series 3 on Intel 18A, the most advanced process fully developed and manufactured in the United States. Both create a firm foundation on which to build the new Intel" (transcript via Seeking Alpha).

On 18A, CEO Lip-Bu Tan said, "While we still have work to do, I'm encouraged by the steady progress on our Intel 18A use, and Naga [executive Vice President and Foundry lead] and his team remain laser-focused on additional improvements as they ramp Series 3 into the high volume needed to meet strong customer demand."

Intel is split into a few major segments: the part that designs chips that go into desktops/laptops/handhelds; and Intel Foundry, its semiconductor manufacturing division, which also offers to make chips for other companies these days.

Early signs are good for Panther Lake. We managed to get our hands on it at CES 2026 and Cyberpunk 2077, on High settings at 1200p without upscaling or ray tracing, managed to get an average fps of 53. With XeSS set to quality, that reached up to an average fps of 74. This is super solid for a mobile chip without a dedicated GPU, and even better if its 20-30 hour battery life claims prove accurate.

18A has been at the forefront of conversations around Intel for a few years now. In 2024, now ex-CEO Pat Gelsinger said, "I've bet the whole company on 18A". Intel is in a good position to cash in on manufacturing process gains, though. Foundry's biggest competition is TSMC. With the insecurity that comes from American tariffs, TSMC has put a lot of money into US fabs, but it's legally restricted from producing the latest node process in the US. This means that if Intel can match TSMC's latest and greatest in Taiwan, it can outpace TSMC America's offerings.

Intel is not, however, all in on 14A just yet, as "It does not make sense to build out significant capacity there until we know that we have the customers that will accept that demand." This is despite Intel reportedly pushing what customers it does have onto 14A just last year.

Intel could be set for a big year ahead of it, with Panther Lake and 18A finally coming out. Nova Lake, the upcoming Series 4 desktop and mobile processor range, is still on track for a launch in late 2026, though it's still not clear how much supply will be gobbled up by datacenters.

Naturally, gamers only make up a portion of Intel's business. The ever-present demands of AI represent a big opportunity for Intel. Tan closes the earnings call saying, "I remain focused on disciplined execution and deep collaboration with our customers to seize the meaningful opportunity created by [the] AI era."

Here's hoping that, if AI has to take up resources, the AI revenue gets put back into the product.

Intel says it has enough memory stockpiled to continue to sell Lunar Lake to plan. According to CFO, David Zinsner, the company has dodged the worst of the ongoing memory crisis by being "relatively aggressive" in securing memory for the mobile chip.

"I think we've got what we need based on the current forecast," Zinsner says. "Of course, that could always tick up, and then we would need more memory which would kind of impact gross margins. But we were relatively aggressive in terms of getting the memory early" (transcript via SeekingAlpha).

Lunar Lake is particularly at-risk from the ongoing memory crisis, which has seen memory in tight supply and prices skyrocket, due to its use of on-package memory. Take a look at the package and you can see two LPDDR5X chips nestled besides the processor. This has benefits for efficiency and size, but has caused some headaches for Intel.

One issue from the get-go was price. Extra chips, more packaging steps, and securing memory all add to the cost of production for Lunar Lake versus other chips. As such, Lunar Lake has not offered the sort of margins that Intel would like, and buying more memory at today's prices would make matters worse.

"Those margins are low because the memory is packaged," Zinsner continues. "So that is an impact to our gross margins as well. But I think we're largely in the place we thought we would be a quarter or two ago."

Intel's ex-CEO, Pat Gelsinger, had already put an end to on-package memory before he left the business.

"It really is a one-off with Lunar Lake," Gelsinger said at the time. "That will not be the case with Panther Lake, Nova Lake and its successors as well. We'll build it in a more traditional way with memory off-package and the CPU, GPU, NPU and I/O capabilities in the package. But volume memory will be off-package in the road map going forward."

Intel dodged a bullet there. Some may have forecasted for fluctuations in memory price, but I doubt anyone understood quite how bad things would get today. Memory shortages are expected to last throughout the year and have left many manufacturers in a desperate scramble to secure more, even at heavily inflated prices.

The Core Ultra Series 2 is soon to be replaced by the Core Ultra Series 3, Panther Lake, which does not feature on-package memory. Intel can rest easy knowing it no longer has to source the memory itself, though it will still be affected by the ongoing crisis.

Someone has to pay for the memory, be it Intel or its partners, and those increases often make their way into the final price tag paid by consumers, like us. So, if we're not buying as many laptops or systems because they're too expensive, manufacturers aren't buying as many chips from Intel, and Intel's still out of pocket. As such, research firm IDC is expecting an "extremely volatile" year ahead for PC sales.

The jetlag has rescinded, the luggage is unpacked, and the weather is miserable. This can only mean one thing: I'm back in the UK after attending CES 2026, and this year's show sure had a load of tech to show off.

Sure, we were more than a little disappointed by the relentless march of AI announcements, particularly in a show with "consumer" in the title, but we still managed to find a host of gaming gear to get excited about. It wasn't the richest of years for PC gamers, but hey, you can't win 'em all.

Below, I've listed all nine of our Best of CES 2026 award picks. Despite all the AI tomfoolery, we still managed to scythe our way through the inference stacks, agentic nonsense, and the odd weird sporting tie-in to find gaming gear worth shouting about, and you'll find the cream of the crop right here.

We've picked out some exciting new Intel chips, some monitor tech that looks to make a real difference to the way we display our games, a mahoosive graphics card, and much, much more. Let's get started, shall we?

Best gaming monitor of CES 2026

1. Best gaming monitor of CES 2026

MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36
Well, here's a kick-off for you—we've already reviewed the best gaming monitor we saw at CES this year, and it's the unfathomably-named MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36. It makes use of what MSI refers to as "5th gen" Samsung QD-OLED panel tech, complete with a vertical RGB stripe pixel configuration that delivers smoother font rendering, better text clarity, and simply sumptuous image quality.

Doesn't sound that exciting? Well, this latest panel tech essentially fixes one of the biggest issues with OLED gaming monitors—which leaves, err, price as the last big hurdle to conquer. Oh, and worries about burn-in, although the most recent long term testing suggests it's not quite as big an issue as many fear.

Anyway, at a CES filled with exceptional monitor tech (a genuine highlight in an otherwise fallow year), MSI's 34-inch ultrawide left us stunned, earning itself many admiring glances at the MSI booth and a 92% review score from our resident monitor expert, Jeremy Laird. That's a man who can tell you what panel a display is using from across a crowded room, so when he breaks out the big scores, you'd best believe you should start paying attention.

Best gaming PC of CES 2026

2. Best gaming PC of CES 2025

Asus ROG G1000
In a crowded show suite, the Asus G1000 stood out for two reasons. One, it's absolutely massive, dwarfing even the Alienware Area-51 in proportions. And two, it's been fitted with not one, not two, but three holographic fan displays.

I'm used to seeing whizzing fans with anime projections cast across them at these sorts of events, but the G1000 is the first world's first system to cram them into a PC case. The AniMe Holo tech lights up both the side window and the front panel with moving holographic imagery to create a show-stopping effect, leaving my jaw genuinely dropped.

Seeing this mega-rig in person is a bit like standing in front of a massive ship in dry dock. The proportions are difficult to express in words, and while the holo-imagery doesn't speak to my personal tastes, we as a team couldn't let this one slip without giving it an award. Remember when CES was all about outrageous PC gaming tech reveals? Asus has remembered, and for that, it gets a gold star.

Best graphics card of CES 2026

3. Best graphics card of CES 2026

MSI GeForce RTX 5090 32G Lightning Z
While we're on an "outrageous gaming tech" kick, how about the most extreme variant of the already-silly RTX 5090? Yes, the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 32G Lightning Z takes the crown for the best graphics card we saw at this year's show, as MSI has thrown the kitchen sink at Nvidia's top-tier GPU to turn it into something that redefines PC gaming excess.

Or something like that, anyway. Yes, the reveal was full of overwrought fighter jet metaphors, and yes, it's likely to be incredibly expensive. But, as hardware enthusiasts, it's difficult not to admire a water cooled graphics card with its own 8-inch display, dual 16-pin power connectors, and a 1000 W power limit.

Actually, that last one's not strictly true. MSI says there'll be a 2500 W+ BIOS for "extreme overclockers", although the retail card will swap between 800 W and 1000 W versions with the help of a handy (and unfortunately lightning-bolt themed) keyring, or within the custom software.

There's even a mobile app for GPU tuning, which, in combination with the hand selected components and too many extra features to list here (dedicated multimeter connections, anyone?) makes the Lightning Z the most outrageous graphics card we've seen to date—gold-plated Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 Dhabab Edition be damned.

Best gaming laptop of CES 2026

4. Best gaming laptop of CES 2026

Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo
I've never been particularly sold on the idea of multi-screen laptops, but the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo might be the one to change my mind. It's sort of a dual-screen tablet/gaming laptop hybrid, with a wireless magnetic keyboard that can be attached to the top of the bottom screen to create a traditional laptop format.

I'll be honest, it's pretty chonky when it's all put together, and heavy too. However, as someone carrying a relatively weighty, single-screened 15-inch laptop in their backpack for the majority of the show, I couldn't help but lust over the possibilities.

Juggling multiple windows and tabs around on the cramped screen of a traditional lappy can seriously slow down your workflow, and part of me wanted to slip the Asus machine into my backpack and ferret it back to my hotel room for an evening session.

The Zephyrus Duo can be specced to the hilt with one of the latest Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Panther Lake chips (see below), and even manages to cram the RTX 5090 mobile into one half of its frame for gaming duties. It's potentially a laptop that can do it all, with the extra bonus of being tent-able (my term) for local co-op gaming possibilities.

Will it all work in practice? We'll have to give one a proper review for ourselves. But in the meantime, this is a gaming laptop with serious potential—and for that, it gets a shiny badge.

Best processor of CES 2026

5. Best processor of CES 2026

Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake)
The biggest launch of CES this year was undoubtedly the reveal of Intel's new mobile processors, the long awaited Core Ultra Series 3, Panther Lake-based chips built on Intel's previously-troubled 18A process. Despite the tech giant's wobbles in recent years, its new silicon looks very impressive, particularly in regard to iGPU options.

The Core Ultra X9 388H and Core Ultra X7 368H both sport the new Intel Arc B390 iGPU with 12 Xe3 cores and dedicated ray tracing hardware, while the Core Ultra 5 338H gets the B370 iGPU variant with 10 Xe3 cores. Call us gaming obsessed if you must (it's in the name, after all), but it's the on-chip graphics tile here that's got us really excited for the new chip's possibilities.

Thin and light, dGPU-less laptops with good gaming performance? You'd best believe it, at least from what I saw when I got a chance to do some quick and dirty benchmarking of the top end Core Ultra X9 388H at this year's show. The performance also bodes well for future gaming handhelds, especially if the excellent performance of the Lunar Lake-equipped MSI Claw 8 AI+ of yesteryear is anything to go by.

That particular Intel iGPU-sporting handheld managed to top our benchmark sheet for many moons, at least until the Asus ROG Ally Xbox X came along to steal its crown. And it only had eight Xe2 cores to play with. Should more handheld manufacturers opt for Intel chips, we could be seeing some seriously impressive Arc B390 performance coming to handheld gaming PCs in the very near future.

We've yet to put one of Intel's new beasties under the microscope, but when we do, we'll be anxious to see if those rough figures hold up. Until then, the blue team gets to take home our best processor of CES 2026 award—and a special mention for focussing on consumer hardware, not AI frippery, for its big reveal.

Best handheld gaming PC of CES 2026

6. Best handheld at CES 2026

Lenovo Legion Go 2 SteamOS Edition
We were big fans of the original Lenovo Legion Go, and fell head over heels for its slimmed down variant, the Legion Go S. In fact, the SteamOS variant of the latter handheld currently sits at the very top of our best handheld gaming PC guide, so we all anxiously clamoured around our respective monitors to check out the new Lenovo Legion Go 2.

As expected, Lenovo has done the obvious thing and imbued the new model with an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU. The original made do with the Z1 version (a mighty handheld chip, nonetheless), but Lenovo has brought the new edition bang up to date with some fresh AMD silicon.

So, now you get 16 RDNA 3.5 compute units (CUs) in comparison to the 12 RDNA 3 CUs found in the Z1 Extreme. This should translate to around 33% more graphics rendering performance, and it's not like the original Legion Go was a slouch to begin with.

All this is just as well, as the Legion Go 2's 8.8-inch, 1200p 144 Hz display will take some driving. It'll still likely need a hefty dose of upscaling to make the most of it, but hats off to Lenovo for pushing the hardware that one step further. Like the original, it's still got two removable side controllers, and otherwise looks like a very similar design overall.

That's fine by us. Up the internal power, keep the best bits of the original, and hopefully it's got a shot of landing in our good books once again. The only real bugbear, however, is the price tag: $1,100 is a serious chunk of change, especially when the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X (a handheld we've criticised many times for being too expensive) is a full $100 cheaper.

There wasn't a huge number of handhelds to choose from at this year's show, but Lenovo got the jump on the competition and looks to have delivered something we'll be very excited to test in the near future. Take a bow.

Best innovation at CES 2026

7. Best innovation at CES 2026

Lego Smart Play
Before you go thinking we're ignoring everything that isn't directly related to PC gaming in our awards, how about this for innovation—Lego's new Smart Brick. The Danish toy giant has managed to cram a ton of tech into a single Lego brick, including accelerometers, light and sound sensors, a mini speaker, and a custom ASIC.

To be fair, Lego says it consulted with experts from the "worlds of video gaming", electronic engineering, and a whole lot more to create its fancy new electro-brick, so there's a beating PC gaming heart somewhere in that tiny plastic frame.

Lego says the bricks can be combined with Smart Tags and Smart Minifigs to respond to actions with "appropriate sounds and behaviours", bringing the world of electronic digital fun times to its decidedly-analogue brick-building toys.

The Smart Brick can also respond to changes in acceleration and motion, and uses its speaker and ASIC combo to create audio via an onboard synthesiser. In essence, by changing audio frequencies, the Smart Brick can make itself sound like… well, almost anything, which should open up a whole new range of possibilities for creative builds and play.

As a Lego enthusiast myself, I can't wait to get my hands on one of these to see what it can do. And the kids might like it as well, I suppose. Hands off, small children. Electronics is my remit, and you'll have to take your turn.

Best upgrade of CES 2026

8. Best upgrade of CES 2026

Samsung V-Stripe OLED panel
Yes, this is the very same panel tech found in our best gaming monitor of CES 2026 award winner, the MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36. However, it's Samsung that's manufactured the panels here, and it's not just MSI making use of V-Stripe QD-OLED technology.

By re-arranging the subpixels into rows (similar to a technique used in LG panels) and making use of its quantum dot tech in tandem with a blue backlight, Samsung has managed to solve one of the biggest problems with OLED monitors in one fell swoop.

Many a time have I written that "text fringing may be an issue" when recommending an OLED monitor, but with this clever new pixel arrangement/backlight solution, it looks like I'll be typing it far less often in future.

Sure, the tech has its limits, as pixel density is still a little lower than we'd ideally like. But Samsung has delivered a panel that's had all of us in raptures since we first saw it, and it'll likely be coming to a slew of gaming monitors near you in the near future. Bright, bold, near-infinite contrast QD-OLED displays with crisp text? Yep, OLED tech just keeps getting better, and Samsung looks to be leading the charge.

Best gaming tech of CES 2026

9. Best gaming tech of CES 2026

Nvidia G-Sync Pulsar
Possibly the most impressive demo I saw at this year's show was at Nvidia's technology showcase, where I got the chance to gaze upon an Nvidia G-Sync Pulsar-equipped gaming monitor in action. It's difficult to describe in words just how good its refresh rate-matched backlight strobing tech looks in person (and even harder to capture on video), but I'll have a go anyway.

Essentially, the technology uses a gaming monitor's onboard MediaTek chip to strobe different areas of the screen with the backlight, moments before the scan out updates the image, while simultaneously adjusting the frequency in time with the refresh rate.

That's a complicated principle to wrap your brain around, but the end effect is easy to understand: it improves motion clarity by a factor of four.

In person, this means fast-moving text and objects appear crystal clear—and the difference this makes to the way your eye reads the image overall is profound. It's not just fast-paced games where the tech stands out, either, as even something sedate like Anno 117: Pax Romana is noticeably easier to "read" when the camera is moved around.

Think icons over a map staying in perfect clarity, even when you're quickly hunting around to find the one you want. I hadn't realised just how much perceived motion blur I was experiencing on a regular monitor until I saw G-Sync Pulsar in action, and now I can't unsee it. The difference really is night and day, and Pulsar-less gaming monitors have been ruined for me forever.

So, thanks Nvidia, for sending me back from Las Vegas a changed man. It wasn't the bright lights and never-ending consumerism that got to me in the end, nor the jetlag and the lack of sleep.

Nope, monitor tech is changing forever, and in a world where AI seems to be leading the (dubious) charge towards the future, it's good to see there are still hardware engineers beavering away to make our games better at the base level. I know, it was almost certainly AI-assisted at multiple points in the development process. I didn't say there were no benefits, now, did I?

We've had the chance to do some quick game testing of Panther Lake, Intel's latest generation of mobile chips, and we are impressed. That's good news for a company that has looked like it's been a bad place for far too long. I'm happy to hear that future Intel laptops could have good gaming chops without a dedicated GPU, but it's not just the gaming performance that has wowed me thus far. It's something much more mundane: multi-day laptop battery life.

AMD's SVP and GM of Client Product Group, Rahul Tikoo, recently took a swing at Panther Lake, and part of the argumentation is that consumers buy chips based on needs, rather than going for a little bit of everything. In this, Tikoo argues that AMD offers the top of the line for gaming, and therefore, gamers will pick AMD. However, as someone who games a lot, I don't actually look for the absolute best gaming performance out of my laptop. I look for 'good enough' gaming, plus solid ergonomics, a decent weight, and most importantly, strong battery life.

Panther Lake, with its sprinkling of P, E, LPE, and Xe3 cores, is being promised to offer an estimated up to 27 hours of Netflix streaming, which is up to 60% more than Lunar Lake.

MSI's Prestige Panther Lake laptops put those figures at "up to 30+ hours of 1080p video playback". Naturally, gaming will hog that battery much more than streaming shows, but those are still impressive stats nonetheless. As well as this, battery performance will depend on battery size and things like screen size and panel type. For this reason, comparisons aren't an exact parallel. Still, the ROG Flow Z13 with its AI Max 390 chip estimates 10+ hours of battery life out of its 70 WH battery and our Flow Z13 testing measured around an hour and a half of gaming.

Asus' Zenbook S14 UX5406 with its Lunar Lake Intel Core Ultra 9 288V estimates 27 hours of battery life from its 72 Wh, with a very similar methodology to MSI. The PCMark battery life test puts that at 155 minutes while gaming. Two and a half hours of battery life is very solid for a laptop, and if Panther Lake is handily beating those figures, I'd be very happy.

This is because, as much as I love to crank a game up to its highest resolution and best fps, I've never expected that from a device on the go. If it can fit into my bag, and I can use it for a day of work and a spot of gaming from a cafe, I'd be much happier.

I have a chunky Lenovo Legion I bought five years ago with an RTX 30-something in it, and it's still not awful at playing many games. However, when I went to my home country of Ireland over Christmas, it was my M4 MacBook Air that came with me. Even with the growing pains that are Apple's compatibility, I found the joy of such a light, sturdy device to be too alluring. And, in a sense, that's not too far off the experience I want out of a gaming laptop.

Of course, there's always a middle ground between gaming performance and battery efficiency, but early gaming figures are hitting all the right notes. With Intel reckoning its Arc B390 iGPU is around 10% faster on average compared with an RTX 4050, our figures saw CyberPunk 2077 on High settings at 1200p, without upscaling and ray tracing, to come in at an average fps of 53.

With upscaling on Quality via XeSS, that figure jumped up to 74 fps average. With ray tracing at Ultra and frame generation on, we only saw a small decrease to 70 fps. I'd argue this is pretty great for a device without a dedicated GPU, when we consider the heat, portability, and cash upsides that come with it.

This is before mentioning what that could mean for gaming handhelds. Gaming handhelds don't get dedicated GPUs. There are too many concerns for battery size, thermals, and general ergonomics to bother with such extravagance.

When mobile chips are offering genuinely solid gaming performance without one, there's really no need. Intel is also rumored to be working on a dedicated handheld gaming chip called the Core G3 Extreme, with a full-spec 12-core Xe3 iGPU. This is a section where Intel could take the crown this year. We don't have the price point, and this will ultimately be one of the biggest deciders, but things are looking surprisingly good for 18A right now.

Until we have it in our hands, battery life figures are a tad nebulous, though. We need real-life tests to actually know how effective the efficiencies offered in Panther Lake are. However, this is the most excited I've been for an Intel launch in some time, and I'm hoping it's as impressive in the hands.

Intel went on record at CES about a planned version of its new Panther Lake chip specifically configured for handheld gaming PCs but didn't provide any details. Now Videocardz claims the chip will be branded "Intel Core G3 Extreme" and have the same iGPU as Panther Lake in laptops.

That means the Core G3 will get the same 12 Xe3-spec graphics cores as the top-spec Panther Lake chips for laptops. However, the leak claims that some concessions have been made to squeeze Panther Lake into the handheld form factor.

On the iGPU side, it's said that clock speeds have been reduced from the 2.5 GHz of laptop chips like the Core Ultra X9 388H to 2.3 GHz. No doubt the idea is to reduce power consumption without noticeably impacting frame rates.

That slight reduction in clock speed has apparently been enough to have Intel rebrand the iGPU from Intel Arc B390 in the top laptop variants of Panther Lake to Intel Arc B380 for the Intel Core G3 Extreme.

As for the CPU of the Panther Lake package, that's had a bit more of a haircut. The full-spec Panther Lake configuration in the aforementioned Core Ultra X9 388H has four Performance cores, eight Efficient cores and four Low Power Efficient cores. But if this leak is correct, the Intel Core G3 Extreme for handhelds will have two fewer Performance cores, with the other core counts carried over.

Peak clock speeds for the Performance cores have been reigned in from 5.1 GHz for the Core Ultra X9 388H to 4.7 GHz for the Core G3 Extreme.

That probably all makes sense. For mobile gaming, you'd always want the spec to tilt more towards GPU power than CPU power. Panther Lake's Efficient cores, likewise, look to be pretty impressive. So, two Performance cores to handle the really demanding CPU threads and another 12 Efficient cores for everything else should be plenty in CPU terms.

For the record, along with the Core G3 Extreme there is also said to be a non-Extreme Core G3. That has an Intel Arc B360 iGPU with the Xe3 core count reduced to 10 and another slight drop in graphics clockspeed to 2.2 GHz. The non-Extreme variant is reported to have the same CPU core counts as the Extreme chip, but a very slightly lower Boost clock of 4.6 GHz.

All told, this looks like a very promising chip for handheld gaming. Andy had a quick go with the laptop version at the CES show and came away very impressed indeed. Long story short, it looks to be a remarkably capable iGPU and well up for 1080p gaming at decent quality settings.

It should easily have the edge on AMD's equivalent APU, the not-entirely-new Ryzen AI 400 series also announced at CES. The big questions at this point are therefore not so much peak performance, which looks to be impressive, but driver quality and battery life.

On the former point, Intel claims its driver quality is "light years ahead of where we were a few years ago." Regarding battery life, well, we'll just have to wait and see.

Go back a year to 18 months, and there's absolutely no way you'd have picked Intel as the top candidate for the most exciting product launch at CES from the big tech players. But here we are, CES in January 2026, and Intel's new Panther Lake chip isn't just the most exciting launch. It's virtually the only launch.

Nvidia is obviously utterly consumed by all things AI, plus maybe a touch of memory crisis management. So, there were no new GPUs from Team Green. And AMD had nothing but respins of existing products.

I suppose you could point to Qualcomm's second-gen Snapdragon X2 chips as something exciting. But the whole Arm-on-PC thing still has so much to prove, the jury isn't just out, it hasn't even been vetted yet.

Which leaves Intel and Panther Lake. Being pretty much the only genuinely new PC chip at CES means you could get the impression it wins the excitement prize simply by default. It comes first in a race of one, in other words.

Strictly, that's true. But Panther Lake is also genuinely exciting for several reasons. For PC gaming, it's the new Arc B390 iGPU that's most compelling. Intel is claiming up to 70% more performance than its previous-gen Lunar Lake iGPU. And Lunar Lake was really pretty decent.

Our Andy took Panther Lake for a quick spin in Las Vegas and came away impressed. How about Cyberpunk 2077 at 1200p, High settings, no upscaling and 53 fps average? OK, that's without ray tracing. But still impressive, eh?

Add in Quality upscaling, and you're looking at a very playable 74 fps. At slightly beyond 1080p. On a bleedin' Intel iGPU. You can read Andy's piece for some more games briefly tested. But this is a distinctly gameable iGPU.

In fact, it's very, very likely by far the quickest real-world gaming iGPU for the PC. And by that I mean excluding the likes of AMD's Strix Halo, which is super expensive and really built for tasks like running AI models, not games.

Certainly, AMD's "new" Ryzen AI 400 series won't threaten Panther Lake. Because the Ryzen AI 400 series is just the Ryzen AI 300 series with a very slapdash lick of paint. AMD won't have a genuinely new APU for at least a year, and maybe longer.

At the same time, Panther Lake also looks to be pretty power-efficient. There's even going to be a version aimed squarely at handheld gaming PCs, which is surely the most exciting application.

Then there's the whole Intel 18A thing. Panther Lake is the first chip on Intel's new node. 18A silicon still has plenty to prove. But this is surely a promising early viewing.

Indeed, Panther Lake is without any doubt the most promising new Intel chip since at least the Alder Lake architecture in 2021, and I'd argue probably longer still. Most of all, it has the makings of a really nifty chip for gaming handhelds, a subsection of the PC market that is itself an awful lot of fun.

Of course, a single chip doesn't make a golden summer of PC technology. Intel still has it all to prove. And it's hard to know what to make of the future of Intel Arc GPUs, including iGPUs, what with the Nvidia deal that's specifically about pairing Intel CPUs with Nvidia GPU chiplets.

But Panther Lake is clearly a step in the right direction. And it's definitely the most interesting PC chip at CES. And that's some result for Intel.

Panther Lake is a big deal for Intel. After the disappointment of Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake, and the backlash over the instability of Raptor Lake, the chip giant has bet big on 18A, the process node used to make the key component of the new chip, and introduced some key improvements with the architecture. However, Panther Lake's official launch at CES has given both Intel and AMD ample room to take potshots at each other.

Talking to Tom's Hardware, AMD SVP and GM of Client Product Group, Rahul Tikoo, spoke about Panther Lake. Tikoo said "Strix Halo or Ryzen AI Max will kill it" and that "it's not even a fair fight at that point." He added that AMD's top-end chips are "better than that in terms of graphics performance" and that those looking for gaming will be buying gaming-specific chips anyway.

In terms of performance, Tikoo points out Intel's benchmark results for Panther Lake were compared to lower-end and older Ryzen chips: "They compared their highest-end to our midpoint."

Earlier this week, Intel reported that its Core Ultra Series 3 Panther Lake chips are up to 77% faster in regard to gaming performance than Lunar Lake. That's rather impressive, given how much we liked Lunar Lake's gaming performance.

Intel also reports an 82% bump over the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with native rendering and 73% with 2x upscaling. Whether or not this comparison is warranted will depend on the price of Panther Lake.

Tikoo is sceptical. "Wait until you see the price point on that. It's gonna be, you know. Enough said." The high-end that AMD wants Intel to compare itself to also isn't very affordable, though.

In a separate interview with PCWorld, Intel's senior director of product management for client, Nish Neelalojan, aired his own grievances about AMD. “They’re selling ancient silicon, while we’re selling up-to-date processors specifically designed for this market”.

Process nodes aren't everything, but Panther Lake is manufactured on Intel's 18A node (with gate-all-around transistors and backside power delivery), whereas Gorgon Point is using TSMC's N4 node (which is a tweaked N5 FinFET process). What Intel is saying isn't necessarily wrong: It's not competing with totally new hardware, it's competing with a mid-cycle refresh.

AMD's Strix Halo, Strix Point, and upcoming Gorgon Point AI 400 series chips are still using the RDNA 3.5 architecture, and, for the most part, Gorgon Point is simply a refresh of Strix Point, albeit with improved power management. They are still operating off older designs and running off the same node.

AMD's naming schemes and various refreshes have only muddied the waters around which chips actually use new hardware, too.

For instance, when it comes to gaming handhelds, the Ryzen Z2 A is an outdated 7 nm RDNA 2, Zen 2 chip, while the Ryzen Z2 Go is a significantly more powerful but still quite outdated Rembrandt chip with four Zen 3+ CPU cores and 12 RDNA 2 CUs. The standard Ryzen Z2 is better than both of those with its RDNA 3.5 GPU and Zen 5 cores, and the Z2 Extreme blows all of those out of the water, being one of the strongest mobile chips right now.

The difference between outdated silicon and current top-of-the-line is just a single word, or letter, and the weakest of the lot (worse than older generation chips) only officially launched last year.

However, this is a technique that Intel has employed many times over the years. We saw various refreshes of Raptor Lake, which also made its way into the Core Series 2 lineup. This is not to be confused with Core Ultra Series 2, which is Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake. Intel accusing AMD of using old silicon feels a tad hypocritical, given the history of both companies.

In a sense, Intel tightening up its naming scheme and complaining about old silicon feels like a gambit to pull back those it may have lost. If gaming performance is as strong as it says, there is room for Intel to take the gaming handheld crown.

Either way, that back and forth between the two companies shows a competitive fire when it comes to its chips, and more fierce competition is only better for the broader market. I, for one, can't wait to see how Panther Lake performs in a tidy handheld.

It'll be a little while yet before we get the Intel Core Ultra Series 3 mobile chips on our test bench. However, as I'm on the ground at CES 2026, Intel gave me a chance earlier today to put the Arc B390 iGPU through its paces in a brief benchmarking session. I have to say, its performance was pretty impressive—for an integrated graphics solution, at the very least.

Due to my packed CES schedule (my fault entirely), I had less than an hour to quickly run some benchmarks and futz around in the odd game. Still, I'm enough of an old hand to know exactly what game I was benching first—Cyberpunk 2077, of course.

My test laptop was a non-descript Lenovo machine with an Intel Core Ultra X9 388H onboard, the top-end Panther Lake CPU from the new lineup. Still, the lack of discrete graphics hardware means I didn't subject the poor lappy to path tracing, or even ultra settings, at least at first.

No, this is an iGPU, and expectations should be tempered—Intel says the Arc B390 is around 10% faster on average than an Nvidia RTX 4050, and that's not exactly a lightning-fast graphics card.

High settings then, 1200p. No upscaling, no ray tracing. The result?

A perfectly playable average of 53 fps. Now, I'm fully aware that this figure is unlikely to set anyone's world on fire. That being said, for an iGPU with no upscaling or frame generation help, it's still downright impressive. The machine I was testing it on felt like about as default a notebook as you could possible buy, so it was slightly surreal to see it deliver such a result with very little fanfare.

In reality, anyone gaming on a GPU-less portable machine will want to make use of upscaling, so I ran the bench again with XeSS set to Quality, resulting in a 74 fps average result. I'd say that was downright smooth, and I'd happily play Cyberpunk 2077 once more at this sort of image quality and frame rate without complaint.

If I was really pushed, though, I'd quite like some ray tracing. With a gulp, I changed the preset to Ray Tracing: Ultra (hey, why not), enabled frame generation, set XeSS to Auto, consulted with the gods, and set the benchmark off once more.

70.31 fps. Now, given that 2x frame generation is involved, latency would almost certainly rear its ugly head pretty quickly while gaming at these sort of settings, given the lowness of the base frame rate—and as the game was a blank slate with no save file, I didn't have the time to jump in and run through the prologue to prove it. Still, the fact that an iGPU can spit out these sort of frames at all at these settings (with heavy assistance, granted), is fairly impressive.

Giddy with excitement, I noticed that Borderlands 4 was installed on my test machine. This game is, despite several performance patches, notoriously demanding. While there's no in-game benchmark to speak of, I thought I'd quickly run through the opening section to see what sort of frames I could get.

It should be no surprise that the Arc iGPU struggled. BL4 gives the RTX 5090 a hard time, after all, and at 1200p High settings with XeSS set to Quality, I bounced around the 40-45 fps mark. While frame generation is an option in the settings, I couldn't get it to reliably work on the Intel chip—although given FG worked well in my other testing, I'll blame the Rippers for that one.

To finish off, I thought I'd break out Shadow of the Tomb Raider, a game that's getting on in years but is still used by many outlets as a reliable test bench. It's still a very pretty-looking thing in motion, and the benchmark is fairly comprehensive, so I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best,

At 1200p High settings with no upscaling enabled, I saw highs in the 100s, 1% lows in the mid 30s, and an average of 75 fps. Again, this is an iGPU, and while SOTTR isn't exactly cutting edge anymore, it can still push some modern graphics cards with the settings turned up. I'd say that's a very good result for the Arc, and a great showcase of the sort of image quality (and smoothness) that can now be eeked out of a discrete GPU-less machine.

So, what can we glean from my quick and dirty testing? Well, I don't want to draw conclusions until we get the Panther Lake chips under PC Gamer lab conditions. But I have to say, as iGPUs go, it's a very promising start. The 12 Xe-cored chip seems to punch pretty darn hard for its size, and I'd be very, very curious to see what it could do in a gaming handheld.

I do wonder if it's something of a Rubicon-crossing moment for slim and light consumer laptops, too. The sort of people buying discrete GPU-less machines probably won't have gaming as a top priority—but with this sort of performance available, it might bring a few new converts to the cause.

We'll have to see. Still, it's encouraging stuff, and I can't wait to clamp one of these chips down and put it through its proper paces when I get home. What time's my flight again? I've got testing to do!

With Framework manning the helm for years now, it seems like more modular laptops are on the way, or at least semi-modular.

Announced at CES 2026 (via Wccftech), Schenker has shown off the first semi-modular laptop based on Intel's Panther Lake. Last year, Intel unveiled a reference semi-modular design in its blog, and this Schenker design is the first to roll out a finished product with it.

The Schenker Element 16, which is reportedly launching in Spring 2026, has an Intel Core Ultra Series 3, with support for up to 64 GB of memory. We don't yet know what the price point is or when orders will open up.

As displayed on the Bestware website, there's a small latch on the bottom of the laptop, which can be flicked to get access to the internals. From there, you can take off and replace the keyboard, swap out the storage and memory, replace the battery and fans, and you can even customise the ports on the sides of the device.

Wccftech says that future motherboard upgrades are planned, meaning you can swap the Series 3 chip out for something else, if available. The fact that this is based on an Intel design, however, does suggest you will only be upgrading to future Intel chips.

Naturally, this would require Intel supporting those modular motherboards, so it's not always a guarantee. The screen doesn't appear to be easily replaceable, but the Element 16 has a 16:10 2560x1600 panel, which is pretty solid.

Early images do suggest it's a bit of a chunky device, closer in size to a gaming laptop than I originally expected. We are, however, unlikely to get a gaming laptop with this reference design for some time, if ever.

Framework, the biggest player in the modular laptop space right now, took its time to actually get modular gaming parts, and even now, it's pretty limited. The Framework 16 that launched in 2024 got a modular Radeon 770S GPU graphics expansion card, but we didn't receive another one until the RTX 5070 expansion in the latter half of 2025.

Modular graphics card upgrades are niche by nature, which means a certain user base needs to exist to guarantee interest from companies. As well as this, many laptop designers who work off reference designs would be better served selling entire laptops, rather than singular parts. An upgradeable machine could last you a very long time with a good upgrade plan, but a singular unupgradable laptop may only last you a few years.

Still, if Panther Lake lives up to expectations, it could serve as a solid base for a productivity laptop with some gaming, as Intel argues the Series 3 has "a bigger GPU in a class of its own." Intel's previous desktop offerings weren't great in the gaming department, but its laptop chips were certainly impressive. Here's hoping it comes with enough memory and storage that you won't need to immediately upgrade it.

The Asus Zephyrus G14 and G16 gaming laptops will see another hardware refresh in 2026. Updates include even nicer OLED screens, a more beastly Nvidia RTX 50-series GPU, plus new Intel and AMD CPUs.

You'd think the headline act would be the GPU update, but only the G14 now boasts "up to" an RTX 5080 (you could already get the 2025 version of the G16 with an RTX 5090). This hardware refresh also introduces a fresh suite of CPUs, with the G14 offering the choice between "a next-Gen AMD Ryzen AI processor" or a "next-Gen Intel Core Ultra processor," while those opting for the beefier G16 will get their hands on a Panther Lake Intel chip.

Turns out, that 'next-gen' AMD CPU option is one of the not actually all that new Ryzen AI 400 chips, specifically the AMD Ryzen AI 9 465. As for the Intel offering, there may well be more reason to get excited; already during CES 2026, Intel has claimed its new top-end Core Ultra Series 3 mobile chips boast up to 77% faster iGPU gaming performance than Lunar Lake, while Panther Lake could offer significant gains in performance and power efficiency. If you're interested in either gaming laptop, Intel might just be the way to go.

Alongside still sleek, CNC-milled aluminium chassis, both models show off new ROG Nebula HDR OLED displays "capable of 1100 nits peak brightness." The G14's screen features up to 3K resolution and 120 Hz, while the G16 sees 2.5K resolution and 240 Hz, though either way you'll enjoy a 0.2 ms response time. I foresee many a cornea-sizzling, late-night gaming session in someone's future.

Release dates and pricing information have yet to be revealed. Still, I think it's fair to say that picking up either gaming laptop will set you back a significant chunk of change, whether you go for the top-tier loadout or a slightly less powerful build.

Though we thought highly of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and the G16's 2025 editions, fan noise and toasty thermals dulled the shine on both of these gaming laptops. It's why these beasties have been relegated to the also tested section of our best gaming laptop guide, simply unable to compete with the cool as a cucumber Razer Blade 16. There's reason to hope these 2026 models will redress the balance.

Asus ROG claims that both the G14 and the G16 will "take efficient thermals to the next level with ROG Intelligent Cooling features that minimize noise and maximize performance." The company goes on to share, "Featuring a redesigned bottom panel with improved ventilation and an optimized exhaust vent design on the bottom panel, the Zephyrus G14 and G16 stay cool and quiet even under heavy load."

But will these efforts finally banish the scourge of an overly toasty lap or much too abundant fan noise? Will the updated G16 finally best the Razer Blade 16, proving itself where the 2025 model faltered? Time will tell, but arguably an RTX 5090 burbling under the hood of such a lightweight chassis isn't going to help the cooling cause.

Along with teasing some very skinny new Alienware laptops, one of the highlights of Dell's CES keynote was the return of the XPS brand in the form of some very slick new portable PCs. Notably, Dell isn't offering discrete graphics options with the new laptops, the implication being that the iGPU in the new Panther Lake CPU makes that unnecessary.

Putting aside the fact that killing off the XPS brand never seemed like a good idea, Dell's new laptops certainly look like a promising return for the XPS line. Initially, Dell is launching the XPS 14 and XPS 16, with a 13-inch model to follow.

Key attributes for the XPS 14 and 16 models include extremely high quality build quality, the "best battery life in the industry" and optional tandem OLED displays.

Chassis-wise, the laptops have an all-new design that has some similarities with previous XPS laptops, but does away with the capacitive function keys that proved so controversial, returning that top row of buttons to the keyboard proper.

Dell has also added subtle etching on the otherwise seamless glass trackpad panel below the keyboard, again addressing a design issue with the previous XPS design, which left users guessing exactly where the trackpad edges were.

Next up is new battery tech. Dell claims it's the first to implement 900ED (energy density) battery cells. Our understanding is that existing battery tech in commercially available laptops tops out at around 700ED.

That's an increase of over 20% in terms of energy density and it has allowed Dell to make these laptops both extremely compact and very long lasting. Dells says the XPS 14, "is now more compact than the MacBook Air 13, taking up less desk space while giving you more screen space." Both models are just 14.6 mm thick.

Despite being smaller than a MacBook Air, the XPS 14 has much more battery capacity, coming in at 70WHr to the Air's 53.8WHr. In combination with the new Intel Panther Lake chip, the result is incredible claimed battery life of up to 40 hours of local video playback and 27 hours of streaming video.

Slightly oddly, the larger XPS 16 has the same 70WHr battery, perhaps because the battery tech is so new, Dell can only source one capacity size, for now.

Anywho, speaking of that new Intel Panther Lake chip, Dell seems to think it's so good that a discrete GPU option is no longer necessary for these XPS portables. As Andy has reported, Panther Lake is claimed to be up to 77% faster than Intel's previous best iGPU in Lunar Lake, which itself was no slouch. Long story short, we can't wait to see just how good Panther Lake's graphics really is.

Rounding out the new XPS 14 and 16's highlights are optional tandem OLED screens. In this context, "tandem OLED" means just what you'd think, namely two OLED panels stacked atop one another.

This makes for a brighter, more robust OLED panel. Dell quotes full screen brightness at 400 nits, which is better than any desktop OLED monitor. It's worth noting that the OLED screens come with a battery life hit, though Dell isn't quoting specifics for now.

However, Dell has released pricing, pegging entry pricing at $2,049.99 for the 14 and $2,199.99 for the 16. Both laptops are available from today.

Along with the XPS 14 and 16, Dell said that an XPS 13 model will arrive later this year. It gets the same premium build quality, but will be the thinnest and lightest XPS ever, measuring under 13 mm thick.

Intel has finally taken the last wraps off its Panther Lake-based Core Ultra Series 3 range of mobile chips, and it's making some pretty impressive claims about their performance. Before the expected AI NPU TOPS figures, Intel's VP of PC products, Dan Rogers, dedicated a fair chunk of the company's CES 2026 presentation to the gaming chops of the 18A-based silicon.

Ah, it's nice to have a win over the endless AI guff, isn't it? Anyway, headline news is that Intel is claiming up to a 77% integrated graphics performance boost over the previous Lunar Lake-based Intel Core Ultra 9 288V with the top end chips. That's a pretty bold statement, given how impressed we were with Lunar Lake's gaming performance overall.

Intel has also promised much improvement in its GPU driver stack, which, if true, could make these mobile beasties a force to be reckoned with for slim and light gaming machines.

Key to the claimed performance figures are the architectural changes under the silicon hood. Next to some newly-redesigned P and E-cores lies what Intel calls a "massive GPU" for the high end Core Ultra X7 and X9 chips, complete with built-in ray tracing support.

The iGPU in question is called the Intel Arc B390, a Battlemage-branded (sort of) integrated graphics cruncher making use of Intel's new Xe3 cores, and don't even get me started on the naming schemes. There's also the Intel Arc B370 iGPU to contend with, along with a fair few Core Ultra 9, 7, and 5 chips with lower Xe-cored "Intel Graphics" denominations, which I'll go through in detail below.

Intel hasn't confirmed the exact core split yet for each SKU yet, which means we only have a total core count for each chip, not a full P-core, E-core, and LPE-core breakdown. I'll update this article when that information is confirmed.

And, if you'd like more of a deep dive into Panther Lake, including the different chip tile designs and the RibbonFET nanoscale switches, along with the PowerVia backside power delivery that makes Intel's impressive battery life claims (up to 27 hours of Netflix streaming, up to 60% more performance at similar power levels to Lunar Lake) possible, I highly recommend you check out our Nick's Panther Lake architectural break down

In the meantime, though, we've got a whole host of Intel mobile chips to sort through. 14 of them, to be exact. Best get started then, hadn't we?

Intel Core Ultra Series 3 mobile processors

The big guns here are the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H and the Core Ultra 9 386H. The X-variant CPU gets the Intel Arc B390 GPU—complete with 12 Xe3 cores—along with a 5.1 GHz P-core max turbo frequency .

It's the 16-core mega chip, which means it likely gets four Performance cores, eight Efficient cores, and four Low Power Efficient cores, as per Nick's breakdown of the different chip configuration options back in October of last year.

The non-X Intel Core Ultra 9 386H has a slightly lower max P-core frequency at 4.9 GHz, although thanks to its weedy four Xe-core iGPU, it's got eight more PCIe lanes to play with—which will mean it's better suited to laptops with discrete GPUs, at least for gaming purposes.

One of the advantages of Intel's 18A tile-based chip building system is said to be its flexibility for different package requirements, and that's on display here. The Core Ultra 386H also has a lower max memory speed, although the same 96 GB maximum capacity and 65/80 W base and max Turbo power figures as its X-variant bigger brother.

Moving swiftly on, we've also got the Intel Core Ultra X7 368H and Core Ultra 366H processors. Once again, the X-variant gets the 12 Xe3-cored Arc B390 GPU, while the 366H makes do with four cores of Intel Graphics grunt.

Again, though, the lesser iGPU-ed chip gets more PCIe lanes to play with, although with a slightly lower max P-core frequency. Are we spotting a pattern yet?

The Core Ultra 7 366H sports 16 total cores and a 4.8 GHz max clock frequency, which is then followed in the stack by the eight-core Core Ultra 7 365, which is the first of our chips to drop to a 12 MB Smart (L3) cache figure. It's not the most exciting looking chip, and even its integrated NPU TOPs figure is 1 tippety-top off the pace. For shame.

Aha, now we have another Arc B390 GPU sporter, the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H. This is a 16 core, 4.8 GHz max boost frequency chip with 18 MB of Smart Cache and the now-proper contingent of 12 Xe cores. Smart money would bet on this one to be the most desirable chip in an ultra slim and light gaming laptop format, or indeed, a handheld. That's if you're not planning on spending top dollar, at the very least.

What else, what else. Oh yes, the Core Ultra 7 356H, along with the Core Ultra 7 355. The latter drops the L3 cache down to 12 MB, the PCIe lanes down to 12, and the maximum memory speed down to 6800 MT/s. On the plus side, it looks to be the most power-sipping of the chips we've seen at this end of the lineup, maxing out at a 55 W TDP.

Both of these chips, as you may have guessed by now, are mere Intel Graphics-havers—not the full fat, B-series GPU variants.

Which brings me on to the Intel Core Ultra 5 338H, a chip without an X in the name, but with a brand-spanking-new Intel Arc B370 10-Xe3 core iGPU. I don't make the naming rules, and neither, apparently, does Intel.

It's a 12-core chip with a 4.7 GHz max P-core frequency, 18 MB of Smart Cache and the aforementioned super-intriguing iGPU, although Intel's official specs sheet lists it in the "Thermal Velocity Boost Frequency" section, just to make things fun.

And finally, we have the Core Ultra 5 336H, an eight-core chip with a 4.6 GHz max P-core figure, 18 MB of L3 cache, and your standard four Xe core Intel Graphics iGPU, along with the Core Ultra 5 335, 325, 332, and 322. The last two are eight core chips with twin Xe core iGPUs, and make up the bottom of the range we've been shown to date.

Phew. Quite frankly, it's a dizzying and somewhat confusing lineup. But the key takeaway is the claimed performance boost of those Arc B390 and B370 iGPUs compared to Lunar Lake—not to mention the major TDP improvements when compared to some of the previous generation chips.

Slim and light, integrated graphics-reliant mobile devices that can perform well in the latest games have often felt like a pipe dream, but with Lunar Lake (and AMD's Strix Point), that pipe dream became something of a reality.

But if Intel's claims prove to be accurate (and the demos I've seen so far show some impressive performance in games like Battlefield 6 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33) then we may have a new brace of powerful, gaming-capable mobile CPUs on our hands, particularly once XeSS multi frame generation gets involved. And as for handhelds? Intel says it'll have something impressive to show us in the coming months, while the laptop chips will become available for preorder in the latest machines on January 6.

Exciting stuff, ey? Now, after all that technical data, I'm going to go and collapse and dream of specs sheets. The numbers. The numbers never end.

December may be a slow month as far as gaming tech is concerned, but January immediately sends us electronics nerds into a full-on digital sprint. That's because the Consumer Electronics Show (or CES) is a grouping of some of the largest companies in the world, all trying to show off what they've got in the pipeline for the next year or so.

Though AI is ever becoming the buzzword when it comes to major tech events like CES, that doesn't mean there won't also be some interesting hardware to grab your attention. After all, last year saw some excellent GPUs, need laptops, great handhelds, and even actual good uses of AI. Who knew?

We know the likes of AMD and Nvidia both have keynote speeches during the week, alongside dozens of other companies, and we'll even have a few members of the PC Gamer team there on the ground floor to get their grubby mitts (and fingerprints) all over that lovely new tech.

Before we even touch down in Las Vegas for the big event, we know quite a bit about what to expect and what technology we're expecting to see in 2026. Let's get into it then.

AMD at CES 2026

AMD has the opening keynote speech this year, so it will naturally be trying to wow the audience. However, it's worth noting that CES is a general consumer event, rather than a gaming-focused one, so we can't expect all of its gaming offerings for 2026 to get announced here.

With seemingly little fanfare, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D popped up (and was subsequently removed) from AMD's own driver pages earlier this month. Previous leaks put the chip at a 120 W TDP with eight cores, 16 threads, 96 MB of L3 cache, and a boost clock speed of 5.6 GHz. That's 400 MHz above the 9800X3D. Given we know all of this, and it still hasn't officially launched, it seems likely it will finally come out around CES 2026.

Though a tad less concrete than the last chip, AMD reportedly planned to put out a desktop Strix Point APU in 2025 (named Ryzen 9000G), but pushed it back, so we could see more information on that at CES.

We've also seen leaks of the Gorgon Point-like Ryzen AI 9 465, and given the leaks are so close to CES, we could see an announcement there. Gorgon Point does seem to be mostly a rebrand of Strix Point, though, so we aren't expecting huge performance bumps.

Though we expect AI to poke its head into AMD's announcements, we hope part of that is to talk a little more about the future of FSR, post-Redstone (which we recently got to test out).

Intel at CES 2026

Intel has officially confirmed that CES 2026 will mark the global launch of Panther Lake in the form of Core Ultra Series 3 processors. This is the first chip from Intel to be based on its 18A manufacturing process.

Panther Lake popped up in Geekbench last month with okay numbers, but naturally, that doesn't paint the whole story of what the chips are capable of. We're expecting to see a whole bunch of Panther Lake laptops on the showfloor.

Intel's Nova Lake chips are reportedly still coming at some point next year, though we don't know if they, or Intel's discrete GPUs, will make an appearance at CES.

Handheld gaming PCs of CES 2026

As we saw from the MSI Claw 8 AI+, Intel's mobile chips put up a fight against even AMD's best, so it seems likely we will spot handhelds with both Panther Lake and the latest Ryzen APUs. We could see a few more Strix Halo handhelds, as we've seen in the GPD Win 5 and Ayaneo Next II, but it seems like that chip's power and thermal considerations will still be a struggle for many.

There are currently only a few AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme handhelds on the market (Lenovo Legion Go 2, Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, and MSI Claw A8 BZ2EM), so we could see more of those pop up, too.

A big push for the company, Qualcomm reckons its latest Snapdragon X2 chips offer 44% more CPU performance per watt than an Intel Core Ultra 9 285H, and 75% more performance per watt than an AMD Ryzen 9 AI HX 370. With gaming on Arm looking more and more achievable, we could see some impressive Qualcomm-based handheld gaming PCs this year.

Nvidia at CES 2026

On Nvidia's dedicated site for the annual consumer tech show, it says that this year it will be "lighting up CES 2026 with the power of AI." It also says that it will have "hands-on demos at our showcase in the Fontainebleau Las Vegas to inspiring talks and an ecosystem of partners bringing breakthrough technologies to life."

Nvidia's press conference on the CES website has an equally vague description, stating it would showcase "solutions driving innovation and productivity across industries." Again, I imagine this has something to do with AI, as most tech jargon does now.

Team Green owes all its phenomenal growth over the last few years to AI, so its showcases at CES will be as important for shareholders and potential investors as general consumers.

However, don't expect to see much in the way of anything gaming-related, as Nvidia will almost certainly be keeping that for its own GTC show in March.

Laptops of CES 2026

CES tends to have tonnes of laptops (it did last year), so we expect we'll see plenty with dedicated Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs, but also some purely driven by high-end APUs.

Though performance gains will be mostly incremental, it will be a big year for Intel. With its launch of a new mobile-focused processor across multiple SKUs, showcasing new CPU and GPU architectures, the success of Panther Lake will be critical for Intel. So expect a heavy focus on laptops for business, general use, and gaming.

Though it won't have a dedicated presentation, Razer will be on the show floor for CES, as well as other laptop manufacturers. For example, we know that Asus will be there, and as already mentioned, we're expecting to see some Qualcomm laptops, too. As monitors continue to get better, so do laptop screens, so here's hoping for more OLED screens and a slimlined chassis to go with it. The benefit of these beefy yet power-efficient APUs is that companies can make the whole laptop even thinner.

However, laptops, Nvidia, AMD, and Intel will all be feeling the effects of the DRAM supply crisis, so pricing may be a bit hard to nail down across the board. Well, almost across the board.

Monitors of CES 2026

I asked resident monitor expert Jeremey Laird what he expects will pop up, and he said: "2026 isn't shaping up to be a revolutionary year for PC monitors. But we will see incremental improvements. Both LG and Samsung will be rolling out their latest OLED panel techs, already seen in numerous TV sets, more broadly into PC monitors next year.

"That means full-screen brightness beyond 300 nits, higher peak HDR performance and other enhancements. We'll also see OLEDs in an even wider range of formats. Look out for 5K2K 40-inch OLEDs by the end of the year. That could be a new high-end sweet spot."

Samsung is confirmed to make an appearance at CES and will be talking about the DX Division, which is the combination of Consumer Electronics and IT & Mobile. I expect we'll see updates on what it's cooking up in the monitor department.

CES tends to be all about innovation, so it's not unthinkable to think we could see a 6K gaming monitor or two. We have seen 6K monitors for high-end productivity setups, but nothing for gaming yet. To be fair, getting use out of anything with such a high resolution is unlikely, but that's never stopped gamers before. We could always start to see more 5K gaming monitors.

Both MSI and ASRock announced 500+ Hz monitors just days before CES last year, and they were IPS rather than the more common TN and VA, so we're likely to see more of the same this year.

AI all over CES 2026. Again

Boy, CES 2025 was an exciting time. We saw the start of the current generation of graphics cards from big hitters like Nvidia and AMD, and a fresh new batch of handhelds alongside it. However, with those launches now out of the way, and the prices of memory and storage spiking, all eyes are on the cause of those shortages: AI.

One look through the CES schedule shows all manner of AI applications. Lenovo will be giving a keynote presentation on Tuesday, January 6, to "discuss how AI is reshaping how you live, play, and work." AMD's presentation will also focus on Lisa Su's "vision for delivering future AI solutions." Of course, last year's CES also had a heavy focus on AI, but AI has only continued to balloon over the last year.

One of the only ways I've found myself not groaning at the next completely necessary injection of AI into some piece of tech is by turning it into a game. Think of a piece of tech, then think of a way that feeding all your data to a company could possibly improve it, now add "AI" before it. You have something worth a round of funding. AI carpet? Sure. AI capo? Why not. AI toilet? Sorry, we already have plenty of those.

Cynicism aside, we have seen AI tech like FSR, DLSS, and frame generation take the stage at CES, and we've seen advancements in robotics, too. In fact, our Dave said the best thing from CES 2026 wasn't the new GPUs, but instead advancements made in DLSS 4. It even got awarded most innovative AI in our roundup of the best things at CES 2025.

As long as there's some way to pick through the unnecessary parts to find the best bits, AI innovation can be a fascinating part of CES. Luckily, that's what we've got a team on the ground for. I, however, will be curled up nice and warm, enjoying the sights of CES from a safe distance.

Brace yourself for not only a veritable cavalcade of Intel-related leaks, rumours and codenames, but also for the usual caveats and qualifications concerning unconfirmed reports of future products. The news includes Intel's first joint-venture chip with Nvidia, plus several next-gen CPUs, reportedly with a big boost to per-core performance, plus a return to a unified CPU core architecture.

Up front and centre we have RedGamingTech's claims that Intel's first collab' chip with Nvidia will be known as "Serpent Lake". It is, of course, official public information that Intel and Nvidia are collaborating on a generation of future APUs for PCs. So, the basic idea of such a chip is not a stretch. We just haven't had any details as to what that might actually mean.

RedGamingtech describes Serpent Lake as an "APU monster" similar in remit to AMD's Strix Halo chip. It's said to sport Nvidia's next-gen Rubin GPU technology built on TSMC N3P silicon, while CPU tech from Intel's upcoming Titan Lake generation, more on which in a moment. Oh, and it's all supported by LPDDR6 memory.

Exactly how accurate any of this is, well, that's impossible to say. Arguably, the only data point of real note is that "Serpent Lake" codename. Where things get complicated concerns earlier rumours that another Intel architecture, codenamed, Hammer Lake, was to be the first example of the Intel-Nvidia alliance.

However, that "leak" claimed Hammer Lake was an existing architecture slated to be modified to accept an Nvidia GPU in response to the newly announced deal. In reality, it should probably be no surprise that Intel's roadmap of future chips is somewhat in flux following that momentous deal with Nvidia.

With that in mind, Red GamingTech has something of a précis of the next few Intel CPU generations, including Hammer Lake. Intel's next desktop CPU, officially, is Nova Lake, which should arrive toward the end of 2026.

After Nova Lake, according to these reports, is Razer Lake in 2027 or maybe 2028. That sticks with Intel's current Performance and Efficient core approach, but with a fairly hefty double-digit (ie at least 10%) IPC boost over Nova Lake thanks to new "Griffin Cove" Performance cores.

Razer Lake's "Golden Eagle" Efficient cores are claimed to be getting an even bigger boost and it's implied that the success of the team that created those new E cores has convinced Intel to let them loose on the brand new unified CPU core architecture that follows, namely the aforementioned Hammer Lake family, said to be due in 2029.

If Intel does return to a so-called "unified" architecture for Hammer Lake, it will certainly make for interesting marketing. Back before Intel introduced P cores and E cores with the Alder Lake CPU generation, it just had, well, cores. No doubt a return to a single-core architecture, if it happens, will be marketed as some great advance.

Whatever, along with Razer Lake and Hammer Lake is Titan Lake. That's allegedly a mobile-only respin of Razer Lake with Griffin Cove P cores and Golden Eagle E cores, plus some tweaks and enhancements.

However, rather than the CPU cores being the interesting aspect of Titan Lake, it will be the debut of Intel's Xe3P graphics architecture that marks the new mobile chip out as something special.

To recap, then, we have the Intel-Nvidia Serpent Lake mega-APU, supposedly with Nvidia Rubin graphics, the Razer Lake CPU architecture with a hefty performance boost over Nova Lake, Hammer Lake which sees a return to a unified core architecture, and Titan Lake, which is mobile-only and rocks Intel's next-gen Xe3P graphics.

Given that Intel looked on the brink of collapse about a year ago, and bearing in mind recent rumours that Intel's fabs have also inked multiple deals with big customers, this is all fairly promising stuff.

TSMC is the biggest semiconductor manufacturer in the world with 70% foundry market share. Its chip fabs are mostly based in Taiwan, but it does also have one fab in Japan, two in China and, more pertinently to this story, two in the USA: one 8-inch fab in Washington, and one 12-inch fab in Arizona. However, neither of these lattermost fabs are TSMC's very best, nor will they ever be.

TSMC is accelerating its plans for 1.4 nm silicon manufacturing, with the hopes of going into full production in 2027. However, according to the Central News Agency, that bleeding-edge tech won't be coming to TSMC's stateside fabs any time soon due to Taiwan's ‘National Core Technologies’ regulations (via Dan Nystedt on X). As per these regulations, TSMC can only transfer production tech that is at least two generations old to its fabs outside of Taiwan.

This point arose during the Legislative Yuan's Education and Culture Committee, when Taiwan People's Party legislator Liu Shu-pin expressed concern about how the Taiwanese government can ensure key R&D advancements in semiconductor tech stay in Taiwan.

National Science Council Vice Chairman Lin Fa-cheng reassured that the list of 'national core technologies' is reviewed every year, and explained that the 'N-2 principle' means that only older tech can be exported globally. Basically, even after TSMC gets 1.4 nm silicon up to speed in Taiwan, its US-based fabs will only be able to make 1.6 nm chips.

It's not just this tech generation regulation that TSMC needs to worry about, though. Tsou Yu-hsin, the deputy director-general of the Development Research Agency at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, noted that TSMC's US investments will be regularly reviewed. He added that the Investment Review Committee of the Ministry of Economic Affairs will pay particular interest to both the impact on the semiconductor industry and Taiwan's own national security if TSMC's US investments breeze past a certain upper threshold.

With that in mind, Intel may well have the floor Stateside. The lag in TSMC's US fabs getting the company's leading tech will likely give Intel room to breathe. And with TSMC's hands tied by local regulation in Taiwan, US-based businesses may well look to the well-established Intel and its many Stateside fabs for leading chip tech closer to home.

That could certainly lift internal morale which, last I checked, was "in the toilet." With the company's Panther Lake CPU line on the horizon, (and retail listings for Intel Panther Lake laptops already leaking), at the very least, Intel may have reason to look forward to 2026.

Intel says it plans to launch the new Panther Lake mobile CPU at the CES show in January. But what with Intel's patchy track record of late, let's just say seeing is believing. With that in mind, it's reassuring to find that laptops based on Panther Lake have popped up on more one etailer, albeit presumably by accident.

MSI's Prestige laptops, in both 14- and 16-inch formats, and ranging from roughly 2,000 Euros to 2,500 Euros, or about $2,300 to $3,000, appeared on a French etailer, though it's far from clear if the pricing is final.

All of the various models were listed with 32 GB of RAM, which is notable given the ongoing RAMpocolypse. But perhaps the most interesting are the variants with Panther Lake 'X' chips.

That includes the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H and the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H. Both of those chips get the big Panther Lake CPU die, making for a total of four Performance, eight Efficient, and four low-power Efficient CPU cores.

The 'X' prefix is the really intriguing bit, however, and is thought to refer to Panther Lake SKUs with the larger GPU chiplet containing 12 Xe3 GPU cores. The rest of the Panther Lake range makes do with a smaller GPU chiplet containing just four Xe3 GPU cores.

According to the latest leaks, the full 12-core GPU will be branded Intel Arc B390, with the 'B' prefix aligning it with second-gen Battlemage GPUs, like the Intel Arc B580, despite the 'Xe3' architecture making it theoretically a third-gen product.

Of course, we've covered off Intel's confusing Arc branding before. Suffice to say here that none of it makes any sense at all.

Meanwhile, in the US Walmart briefly had a listing for another laptop powered by Panther Lake. It's since been taken down (via Videocardz), but while it was up it was much cheaper at $999. This laptop model was configured with an Intel Ultra 7 355, which is a fairly low-end Panther Lake chip expected to rock four Performance and four low-power Efficient cores.

The model was also listed with 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB SSD and a 2K screen. So, it's a fairly mainstream offering.

Leaks like these are pretty commonplace as launch dates near. But the main takeaway here is that Intel seems to be on track to launch Panther Lake at CES in a few weeks, as per its most recently stated plan.

That's got to be good news and indicates that Intel's new 18A chip production node, on which former CEO Pat Gelsinger said he had bet the company, must be in at least tolerable shape.

That said, it took several years from the launch of Intel's first 10 nm chips before that node (now rebranded Intel 7) became a volume staple across Intel's CPU range. So, the launch of Panther Lake in January won't guarantee that 18A is an immediate roaring success. But it will at least be step one in getting Intel back on track.

Intel's long awaited Panther Lake CPU has made an appearance in the Geekbench results browser (via Videocardz). And the early numbers look, well, kind of okay.

According to the Geekbench entry, we're talking 2,849 single-core points and 15,434 multi-core points. Arguably, it's the single-core result that's most interesting as it theoretically allows for a direct comparison between different generations of Intel Performance cores. The multi-core comparison is complicated by the vagaries of difference Performance, Efficient and Low Power Efficient core configurations, albeit the total result is, ultimately, the total result.

The specific Panther Lake model appearing in the Geekbench results is the Core Ultra 9 386H, a mobile CPU as all Panther Lake chips will be at launch. It shows up as a 16-core model on Geekbench and is expected to have four Performance, eight Efficient, and four Low Power Efficient cores.

The closest existing Intel CPU for comparison is the Core Ultra 9 285H, which is a similarly configured 16-core mobile chip, albeit with six Performance and two Low Power Efficient cores. It scores 2,608 single-core points and 14,812 multi-core points.

In that context, Intel has made incremental rather than substantial gains, at least as far as these results go. No doubt the chip tested and its microcode aren't entirely representative of final retail product. But it does not look like Intel has made huge gains in pure performance terms with Panther Lake.

Indeed, Apple's latest M5 chip is cranking out over 4,000 points in Geekbench single-core, as is Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 chip. So, in terms of pure single-core performance, these new Panther Lake results are miles off the industry best. For further context, AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 also scores around 2,800 points in the single-core test, so x86 chips in general lag the best Arm CPUs, right now.

Caveating all this, of course, is the fact that Geekbench is but one data point and not even an actual real-world application. But it does broadly align with overall performance capabilities and so if these results are accurate, it would be surprising if Panther Lake was a performance champ.

The other aspect that Geekbench doesn't help us with is power consumption. As a mobile CPU on Intel's new 18A process node, efficiency and battery life are every bit as interesting and important as outright performance.

For further insight in those aspects, we'll have to wait for Panther Lake's launch at CES in January. But for now, Intel's new chip doesn't look like it's going to be a revolution, at least in terms of performance.

In 2023, research suggested that the decline in global PC shipments was so bad that it was "unparalleled in the industry's recorded history." Fast forward two years, and things are far rosier, with one analyst stating that in the past three months, shipments were up 9.4% compared to 2024. Now, another market research firm has confirmed the good news, claiming that global shipments improved by 8.1% overall, with some vendors improving by as much as 17%.

That's according to Counterpoint Research, in a brief report posted last week. Leading the pack is Lenovo, with the aforemented 17% rise in shipments year-on-year, closely followed by Apple and Asus (15% and 14%, respectively).

HP did better too, rising by 10%, but not every vendor enjoyed better figures. Dell was down by 1% and 'others' (i.e. the rest of the major PC vendors) dropped by 8%. Counterpoint points to a certain operating system as being partly responsible for the uptick in PC shipments.

"The Windows 10 sunset has effectively acted as an industry-wide refresh timer, prompting both enterprises and consumers to replace aging systems ahead of the October deadline. With nearly 40% of the current PC installed base still on Windows 10, this replacement cycle is poised to be a major catalyst for PC market growth over the next few years."

It also mentions that "strategic inventory adjustments linked to evolving US import tariff policies" are responsible, too. Rough translation: People and businesses have been buying new PCs before tariffs make them even more expensive.

All of this does raise a simple question: Why aren't the figures higher if so many PCs are still using Windows 10? Well, Windows 10 has only just reached end of life, and security updates will continue (paid for or otherwise) for at least another year, so there isn't quite as large an impetus for swapping PCs as one might imagine.

Minsoo Kang, a senior analyst at Counterpoint, notes that there's another reason for the relatively small shipment increase: "While the current growth is primarily driven by OS migration, the industry is poised for an even more profound transformation with the rise of the AI PC. However, this next wave of growth has not yet fully materialized in the Q3 2025 numbers."

What Kang is referring to is the fact that, so far, the PC market hasn't exactly been enamoured by the whole AI PC ecosystem. With useful AI still mostly handled via the cloud, upgrading an array of PCs to those that sport AI-capable CPUs just hasn't been worth considering.

It's worth noting that AI PCs, at the moment, are nearly all laptops, as desktop PCs don't fall under Microsoft's definition of an AI PC. That's because they either have a CPU with a rubbish NPU (e.g. Intel's Core Ultra 200S range) or they use the GPU for AI, which is something Windows can't handle right now.

However, the next generation of AI PCs, powered by Intel's Panther Lake and Nova Lake chips, as well as (presumably) AMD's Zen 6 processors, should be far more tempting. Counterpoint's associate director, David Naranjo, thinks it's less about what PCs can do now but what they have the potential to do.

"The PC market’s rebound in 2025 is not just about replacing outdated systems, it is about preparing for what is next," says Naranjo. "Many enterprises are choosing AI-capable PCs to future-proof their fleets, even if they do not yet need those capabilities immediately. The next refresh cycle will be defined by intelligence at the edge, not just performance improvements."

I got to see Panther Lake perform AI tasks in the flesh, at Intel's Technology Tour in Arizona, a few weeks ago, and I came away genuinely impressed by what the little chip is capable of doing. Be it general compute, graphics, or local-memory AI workloads, Panther Lake is on track to be one of Intel's best CPUs for many years. It'll almost certainly be quite pricey, though.

A cynical person might feel that the death of Windows 10 had little to do with Microsoft not wanting to carry on supporting the operating system (underneath its GUI, Win10 isn't vastly different to Win11). Instead, it was an agreement with hardware and PC vendors, who have been struggling with shipments for years, to kick-start sales again.

Whether that's true or not, it would seem that the PC industry as a whole is hoping that Windows 10's exit and the next generation of processors from AMD and Intel will do wonders for shipment figures, revenues, and ultimately, profits. If that doesn't happen, well, we'll just be back to moaning about the decline of the humble PC.

Same as it ever was, I guess.