P-cores get yeeted below 14W. Intel’s Arc G3 handheld chips run IBC 3.5, a trick that kills both performance cores when the SoC sips 14W or less, feeding that power to the iGPU. They already stripped two P-cores from the Panther Lake blueprint, saying those cores barely helped gaming while draining battery.
Under that 14W threshold, the CPU chugs along on eight E-cores and four LP E-cores alone. Internal benches at 12W show a 13% average framerate lift, with some games jumping 31%. The Arc G3 Extreme posts a 37% lead over AMD’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme at the same 12W.
With a 35W sustained cap, the Extreme SKU apparently lands a 44% advantage over Intel’s Core Ultra 7 258V Lunar Lake and a 42% edge over the Z2 Extreme. Crank it down to 17W, and it nearly matches the Z2 Extreme at 35W with about double the performance per watt.
Just keep in mind these numbers all flow from Intel’s internal testing. No independent reviews yet, and real handheld results will swing on cooling, firmware, and game choice.
Under that 14W threshold, the CPU chugs along on eight E-cores and four LP E-cores alone. Internal benches at 12W show a 13% average framerate lift, with some games jumping 31%. The Arc G3 Extreme posts a 37% lead over AMD’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme at the same 12W.
With a 35W sustained cap, the Extreme SKU apparently lands a 44% advantage over Intel’s Core Ultra 7 258V Lunar Lake and a 42% edge over the Z2 Extreme. Crank it down to 17W, and it nearly matches the Z2 Extreme at 35W with about double the performance per watt.
Just keep in mind these numbers all flow from Intel’s internal testing. No independent reviews yet, and real handheld results will swing on cooling, firmware, and game choice.
