Intel has just announced that it’s developing a new chip platform specifically for gaming handhelds, and it will be based on the company’s brand new Panther Lake architecture. Dan Rogers, Intel’s VP and GM of PC products, revealed the news at the company’s keynote at CES 2026, where several launch partners were revealed, including Acer and MSI. Not only that, but Intel also hinted that it was looking at other operating systems beyond Windows for the new chip.
The new chips are set to be announced later in 2026, and Rogers stated that the entire platform will be based on Panther Lake. Importantly, that means it will contain Intel’s new GPU architecture, as used in Arc B390. Intel is making some big claims about Arc B390’s performance, saying its gaming performance is, on average, 73% faster than AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 in its game tests.
With 12 Xe cores at its disposal, as well as support for Intel’s latest XeSS3 multi frame gen tech, Intel says it can run Battlefield 6 at 145fps. There’s potential for an awesomely powerful handheld chip here. Not only that, but we may see non-Windows handhelds using this new Panther Lake platform too.
Speaking at a Q&A event after the keynote, the company was asked about the sales of Windows handhelds and whether we could see other operating systems running on this new Panther Lake handheld platform. ‘We will start off with Windows handhelds,’ confirmed senior director of product management, Intel’s Nish Neelalojanan, but he added that ‘we are exploring other avenues as well. We’re exploring all opportunities…this market is starting to grow, there’s a lot of interest, and we have the right product.’
While there are a lot of Windows handhelds available right now, their sales are small compared to the likes of Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck. ‘In the Windows handheld market today, you could see some of the published available data – it’s more in the very low, single-digit million units,’ said Neelalojanan. ‘The handheld market itself sells tens of millions of units, but it includes the Nintendo DS, it includes the Steam Deck.’
Will there be Panther Lake handhelds running SteamOS? Intel wouldn’t say, but it looks as though there’s potential here. More news is promised soon, so watch this space.
We’re here at CES 2026, and we’ll be speaking to Intel about Panther Lake, and having some hands-on time with the new chips, including game benchmarks. If you want to make sure you’re in the loop, follow our Google News feed by clicking the button below. We also invite you to consider adding Club386 to your Google Preferred Sources, so you’re likely to see all our coverage of new PC hardware from the show. Again, you just need to hit the button below.
