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For quite a while, AMD and its APUs have dominated the handheld PC landscape. Whether it be the custom APU for the Steam Deck or the Z2 Extreme in the Xbox Ally X, AMD has been the main APU used to power the most popular handhelds. However, at Computex, Intel announced its new APU line made for handhelds. And from what they’re saying, it looks like it could give AMD some trouble.

The Intel ARC-G3 APUs were announced a few days ago, and have already been announced with three handhelds that are going to be using them. The new MSI Claw, OneXPlayer 3, and Acer Predator Atlas 8 are all planned to be using the new APU. On top of that, the new MSI Claw is already slated to be releasing later this month. And at Computex, they went into the power the APU has, and how it compares to the newest Z2 Extreme from AMD.

Intel Arc G3 Extreme vs AMD Z2 Extreme

In the comparisons, they noted that on average, their APU is 42% faster than the Z2 Extreme at the same wattage, and is getting around 2x performance per watt at just half the power of the Z2 Extreme. This means that the chips relatively performed the same when the Arc G3 Extreme is at 17W and the Z2 Extreme is at 35W. This bodes extremely well for the Intel chip, since it shows how much more performant it is. This could mean getting similar performance with longer battery life, or pushing performance even higher.

It’s going to be really interesting to see how it holds up in real world trials. These are all based on Intel’s internal testing, but if it’s true, this new chip is going to be a huge leap over the Z2 Extreme, and start putting Intel on the map for handheld APUs.

Source: VideoCardz, GamerNexus

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Noah Kupetsky
A lover of gaming since 4, Noah has grown up with a love and passion for the industry. From there, he started to travel a lot and develop a joy for handheld and PC gaming. When the Steam Deck released, it just all clicked.
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