Intel makes a bid for handheld gaming PCs with new Arc G3 processors
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I really can't believe that they wouldn't lead with SteamOS at this point. Willfully throwing good money after bad. Mentioning Win11 after MS itself had to apologize?
I do wonder what the PC market will look like shortly, with RAM prices, the looming Windows cert issue and Valve, Mac nibbling off the edges. MS didn't issue a mea culpa for nothing, that is for sure.
I do wonder what the PC market will look like shortly, with RAM prices, the looming Windows cert issue and Valve, Mac nibbling off the edges. MS didn't issue a mea culpa for nothing, that is for sure.
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This would with a little work make a heck of a mini pc. Could probably do emulation up to switch 1
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Hopefully much better, the Steam Deck can emulate the original Switch and some PS3 games included Bloodborne.
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I have the Intel Arc 140T integrated chip in my new barebones home theater ASUS NUC and it is no slouch at 1080P couch gaming. I'm quite impressed. It definitely outperforms the dedicated GTX1060 it is replacing. And basically dead quiet (which the GTX1060 was like an SR-71 at takeoff).
That being said, these B-series chips vastly outperform the Arc 140T so they must be pretty darn good.
That being said, these B-series chips vastly outperform the Arc 140T so they must be pretty darn good.
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Why does a handheld gaming device need 14 CPU cores? Should have reduced CPU cores and added more GPU cores
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My concern is commitment. Intel has supposedly already killed the C-series desktop GPUs and the D-series is apparently on the ropes. It seemed like the Master Plan was for the discreet desktop GPUs to fund the development of the new iterations that would eventually trickle down into these types of packages. But if Intel is already scaling back on new development that makes investing with them as your chip partner...risky, IMO.
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As the fine article states, there are three different kinds of cores in the mix, with only two tuned for maximum performance. Which makes sense for a mobile device, most games aren't that heavily multithreaded, and, to be completely honest, a lot of popular games on Steam Deck aren't that demanding on the CPU. I don't think the likes of, say, Balatro or Mina the Hollower are going to need that grunt, so putting the heavy-duty cores to deep sleep means less watts wasted and thus more time spent actually playing and not being bound to a charger.
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Microsoft secure boot certificates are set to expire in June 2026.
Edit: s/Windows/Microsoft
Cert expiration could also impact Linux systems relying on Microsoft cert.
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Man, good to know these are not vPro eligible. I was really wondering about that.
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I assume it's a reference to the expiration of the 2011 secure boot CA certificates; which is happening in the immediate future. I'm not sure I'd classify that as anywhere near the top of the list of reasons not to want to deal with win11 though. For the systems I deal with at work the update to the 2023 CA certs has been downright surprisingly smooth and newer hardware has those baked into the shipping firmware anwyay. Plus, even if you don't update, MS makes some vague noises about how you'll totally be potentially missing out on the glorious secure boot trust experience but the system continues to boot as normal; which is likely what people who aren't busy worrying about blacklotus style malware will actually care about.
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It's already the fully enabled GPU.
The E/LP-E cores come in groups of 4. So for the E cores, it's 4 or 8 and the LP cores are slow, on the I/O die, and intended to be used for unimportant background shit. 2P/8E/4LP-E is pretty much the minimum spec that would make sense for a mobile gaming CPU. 2P/4E/4LP-E would be a little light for the "flagship" version, but I coukd see it happening on a lower spec version.
Intel's current architecture is tile based. Dropping some E cores doesn't unlock silicon for more GPU cores.
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As TFA says:
- 2 high-performance P-cores
- 8 eight E-cores
- 4 lower-power LP E-cores.
So two for max speed, a double handful for general use, and a few wimpy ones for background services. It’s a lot, but if they had shipped less we would be bitching about it being underpowered or not future proofed. When you’re trying to break into a market, you either undercut on price or you go big. I’m glad they went for go big; Intel certainly can’t compete on price anymore.
As for the graphics side…
“The main difference is the GPU; the Arc G3 Extreme uses a fully enabled Arc B390 GPU with 12 Xe cores, while the Arc G3 includes an Arc B370 GPU with 10 Xe cores”
I don’t know enough about Arc to know if this is good, bad, or indifferent. Apple’s M5 has 8 graphics cores at the low end, so if that is a bottom bound, then Intel doesn’t look too far off base…?
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So speakth the tech crowd.
The reality, especially among younger gamers, is, "it has to work out of the box for what I want to do with it."
The way the economy is currently heading, and the likely fallout from that, has yet to be felt. But you give WAY too much credit for the tinker factor to play any significant role in the popularity of these kinds of things. It's a social bias here on Ars, and understandable for that.
But out there in the clueless world? Yeah, you have people who CAN work some tech magic on their devices. But I'd say that's a relatively low, single digit percentage of those who buy that tech. Most people take it out of the box and hope some familiarity with what came before will carry over into the new stuff. Make that leap a bit too far, and you don't sell any devices.
Yes, you CAN cater to the niche crowd, and maybe even make a profit. But you're not going to be doing volume sales. The kind of "growth" thing that CEO's love and cancer survivors hate.
Intel has coasted on reputation for too long, IMHO, and they threw a lot of customers under the bus over pricing and performance issues in the last decade (or at least the last time I bought an Intel CPU). So there's some bad will on the part of customers, and former customers (like me) for devices they have some exclusive deals on.
Time will tell, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Knowing Intel, it's going to be too expensive, too hot and too buggy to be an experience worth switching from what's already out there.
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I tried gaming on Fedora with an Arc A770 16GB for a year and had a lot of issues related to graphics and games. It was annoying enough that I sold it and installed a 9060XT 16GB and have had close to zero issues since. Intel's XE driver stack still need a ton of work on Linux for it to be worth it if not using Windows. Valve's devs have been noted to make comments regarding Arc Graphics cards not being worth the dev time due to the lack of install base, but maybe that would change?
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Maybe I missed this but I can't determine if they will have unified memory like on the 258V that they used on the MSI Claw 8 AI+.
I have the existing MSI claw and the unified memory really made it is a great gaming handheld that could switch over to a really powerful docked computer.
I have the existing MSI claw and the unified memory really made it is a great gaming handheld that could switch over to a really powerful docked computer.
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Seems like a sweet little chip, bet those handhelds will run Bazzite like a champ
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Not sure what kernel you were running but I stopped having issues after 6.12 or so. You also need rebar enabled and it helps to have a newer processor. That was my experience with an a380 in one of my servers for transcoding. I also have a b580 in my HTPC and it has been running great in Ubuntu 24.04 for the last 9 months or so that I’ve had it.
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I use a first gen ARC GPU off and on on Linux and it seems to run games fine with the open source driver so it's probably not out of the realm of possibility.
Also, by fine I mean it's not a 5090, but it runs them close enough to windows that's to perfectly usable.
Metro games, Tomb raiders and World of Warcraft are some of the ones I have spent a little time tinkering with on it, all seem well playable.
Also, by fine I mean it's not a 5090, but it runs them close enough to windows that's to perfectly usable.
Metro games, Tomb raiders and World of Warcraft are some of the ones I have spent a little time tinkering with on it, all seem well playable.
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I'm not sure about for gaming handhelds, their TDP is I think much higher than the Steam Deck's APU. It's probably a matter of expectations, though, as I just don't do much moderate-to-heavy gaming on my Steam Deck.
Might be interesting as a gaming thin-and-light, though, since it'd have a much larger battery and they should still be perfectly adequate for day-to-day use. The idea of something the size of my now-somewhat-aged XPS13 with moderate gaming chops is neat.
(When I'm approximately 77, and can afford computer bits again without selling an organ on the black market.)
Might be interesting as a gaming thin-and-light, though, since it'd have a much larger battery and they should still be perfectly adequate for day-to-day use. The idea of something the size of my now-somewhat-aged XPS13 with moderate gaming chops is neat.
(When I'm approximately 77, and can afford computer bits again without selling an organ on the black market.)
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Chart says TDP can be configured from 8-35W. The Steam Deck tops out at 15W. I think some versions of the Z1 can go much higher than that, though that's often limited to when they're plugged in so they don't drain the battery immediately.
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It's a bit more nuanced with Intel. AFAIK even the Ultra X9 388H only has 4 P-cores. The rest are a mix of E and LPE cores.
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Fun fact time!
The "startup sound" of the SR-71 sounded EXACTLY like two big V-8 Buicks from the '60s, racing right next to each other.
https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/V...play/Article/198048/j-58-engine-starter-cart/
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Seems cool but I don't think any of these will move the needle much until computer components come back down.
Looking at company reporting that should be...FML...2028 at the earliest.
First Bitcoin and now AI. Sigh. It's now like we got windows before the next tech scam / hype screws up pricing.
Looking at company reporting that should be...FML...2028 at the earliest.
First Bitcoin and now AI. Sigh. It's now like we got windows before the next tech scam / hype screws up pricing.
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Probably not, going by the specs. It handles either LPDDR5 or LPDD5X and "up to" 96GB memory means they'd need to make a pile of different models. The 258V gives you one memory option.
There's also that the whole Panther Lake lineup isn't going with unified memory - which is possibly just because Lunar Lake was made by TSMC and gave Intel the option. Might have offered some cost savings or something to laptop makers.
These are still going to be really powerful docked computers though. If I can get one with 64GB+ RAM at any kind of reasonable price I'll be jumping on it. I've been looking at used Z1E based handhelds for the same purpose and the only thing putting me off is the memory constraints. I am worried about availability of these devices though, likely they'll get snapped up by people wanting to use them for AI.
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"Unified memory" doesn't mean it's on the CPU die. That would be quite expensive.
Unified memory is actually not a good description of what's being described here. Unified memory generally means the GPU and CPU can access the same memory, allowing the CPU or GPU to access that same data without the penalty of copying it from "CPU memory" to "GPU memory" or vice versa. That's not what Intel does. On their recent CPUs, they're allowing you to specify a memory split between the CPU and GPU. They still have their own dedicated chunks of memory, but you can allocate a lot more to the GPU now, which is important if you're trying to run huge LLMs which need to be loaded into GPU memory.
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