CES 2026: Intel's New Chips Are Coming For Your Gaming Handhelds

Every year at CES, Intel and AMD announce their newest processors. This year, Intel debuted its first line of chips made with its 18a process, which stands for 18 angstroms, or under 2nm. To make that a little less nerdy, that means these chips can fit a lot of tech into a small area, which means big gains in performance.

Colloquially called Panther Lake, the new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 chips are focused on laptops and mini-PCs. But that doesn't mean they don't put out impressive numbers. During its keynote, Intel promised "77% faster gaming performance," and for everyone actually using their PCs to do work, "60% better multithread performance." Impressively, it also said its new chips would also enable "up to 27 hours of battery life," rivaling Apple's M-series chips and other ARM chips from manufacturers like Qualcomm. Battery life has been a sore spot for both Intel and AMD for a while, and I'm excited to get my hands on machines that use Panther Lake processors.

Credit: Intel

And then there's the AI. Intel says its top Intel Core Ultra Series 3 models have 50 NPU TOPs and 180 TOPS in total when you combine the NPU and GPU numbers. To translate, that basically means faster AI performance for developers who don't want to bother with the cloud, and would prefer the speed and privacy of a locally downloaded AI model.

Speaking of that GPU, Intel's upgraded its integrated graphics this generation to the Intel Arc B390, which has twice the cache of its prior GPU and 50% more cores. I already mentioned that 77% increase in gaming performance, but AI developers will also see a 53% increase in performance over Intel Core Ultra Series 2, and a two times performance increase over Intel Core Ultra Series 1.

So, better computers. That's pretty par for the course for CES, but there is a "one more thing" here. Intel is coming for AMD's dominance in handheld gaming PCs.

Credit: Intel

Until now, most handheld gaming PCs have used AMD chips, with those that have opted for Intel getting hit in reviews for buggy or poorly optimized performance. The Steam Deck uses an AMD chip, and so does the Xbox handheld. Intel says it's going to change that.

After announcing the new integrated GPU and walking through features like frame generation and ray tracing, the company said it "will be launching an entire handheld gaming platform with Panther Lake."

That means big moves, and soon—Panther Lake won't last long before getting replaced. The company didn't say much more, but it did show a slide with partners set to use Intel chips in their handhelds, including Acer, MSI, and hey, Microsoft. I guess we'll see another Xbox handheld model soon.

And that's about it for Intel this year. The new chips are smaller, stronger, and more efficient, but smartly, the company is also planning to use them to shore up its weaknesses, specifically in gaming and battery life. That makes sense. With developers like Apple having famously ditched Intel throughout the decade, the company has been on the backfoot.

According to Intel, the earliest machines powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 3 will start accepting pre-orders on January 6, with availability beginning on January 27.

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