Last year, Intel had the best iGPU on the market. This year, it’s broken that record by over 70% with Panther Lake and it’s a huge win for handhelds.
“We’ve overdelivered” is how Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan categorized the Panther Lake launch during the company’s CES 2026 Keynote address, and that really does seem to be the case. But the real highlight of the keynote speech wasn’t the engineering behind Panther Lake, but rather the iGPU and the “handheld ecosystem” Intel is building to capitalize on the iGPU’s performance gains.
Formerly known as the 12 Xe-core variant, the new Intel Arc B390 iGPU offers up to 77% faster gaming performance over Lunar Lake’s Arc 140V graphics chip. Intel’s VP and General Manager of PC Products, Dan Rogers detailed the Arc B390’s performance gains and announced a “whole ecosystem” of gaming handhelds. That ecosystem includes partnerships with MSI, Acer, Microsoft, CPD, Foxconn, and Pegatron. So we’ll finally see more Intel handhelds hit the market.
Panther Lake’s iGPU is Truly Absurd
Back when Intel first unveiled Panther Lake in October, the chip’s gaming performance was touted as 50% better than Lunar Lake, and 40% better performance per watt over Arrow Lake. However, at CES Intel upped that expectation by a significant margin. Not only is Panther Lake’s Arc B390 up to 77% better than Lunar Lake’s Arc 140V iGPU, it’s also 73% better on average than AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 370’s RDNA 3.5 iGPU.
