Intel’s Panther Lake chips with powerful iGPUs are perfect for gaming handhelds

Gaming handhelds are still very popular and many manufacturers have used AMD chips over the last couple of years, because they offered good performance figures at lower power limits. AMD even offers dedicated chips for handhelds, where the GPU performance is prioritized. Intel on the other hand was on their backfoot with the Meteor Lake generation, because it required more power to achieve comparable levels of performance, so there were only a handful of Intel handhelds like the MSI Claw. This changed with the Lunar Lake generation last year and Intel managed to close the gap to AMD both in terms of performance as well as efficiency and the two platforms were pretty much on par.

AMD did not launch a new chip generation for handhelds this year, but Intel just launched their new Panther Lake processors. The models with the new Arc B390 and Arc B370 iGPUs benefit from major improvements in terms of graphics and therefore also gaming performance. During our analysis and reviews, we saw an advantage of 50-70 % at similar power levels compared to the previous iGPUs Arc Graphics 140V and 140T, respectively, but also compared to the AMD Radeon 890M. 

This is also the first time for the last couple of years that we get significant performance gains in this segment. We already saw that the new chips also perform very well in a TDP range between 20-35 Watts, so exactly what most current gaming handhelds use. MSI is currently one of the few manufacturers with Intel based handhelds and we are pretty sure they will launch a version powered by the new Panther Lake chips as well. 

The other manufacturers that previously only offered AMD based handhelds will have to offer an Intel version to stay competitive in 2026. Otherwise, the price would have to be noticeably lower, because AMD’s current chips simply cannot keep up with Panther Lake. We are already eager to try the first handhelds with the new Arc B390 or Arc B370 GPUs. Until then, please see our analysis articles and reviews for more information about the new CPUs and iGPUs:

• Intel Core Ultra X9 388H CPU Analysis
• Intel Arc B390 GPU Analysis
• Intel Arc B370 initial benchmarks

Editor of the original article: Andreas Osthoff – Managing Editor Business Laptops – 2098 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2013

I grew up with modern consumer electronics and my first computer was a Commodore C64, which encouraged my interest in building my own systems. I started working as a review editor for Notebookcheck during my dual studies at Siemens. Currently, I am mainly responsible for dealing with business laptops and mobile workstations. It’s a great experience to be able to review the latest devices and technologies and then compare them with each other.