One thing to sit up for: The current surge in handheld gaming PCs has been made potential partly attributable to AMD’s cellular APUs, however Intel may disrupt issues. A brand new entrant out there may present an early preview of the corporate’s forthcoming Meteor Lake chips, that are anticipated to convey a couple of basic redesign of the corporate’s structure.
Chinese language {hardware} firm Emdoor just lately launched its entry into the rising handheld gaming PC market. The gadget intently resembles current merchandise from Lenovo, Asus, GPD, and Valve, however below the hood, it runs on a processor from Intel’s upcoming Meteor Lake sequence.
Named the EM-GP080MTL, this Home windows 11 moveable gaming system contains a Meteor Lake-H CPU, built-in graphics based mostly on Intel Arc 5, and an 8-inch 16:10 1,920 x 1,200 LCD display screen – though the corporate did not specify the refresh charge. It helps as much as 32 GB of LPDDR5X RAM and as much as 2 TB of PCIe 4 NVMe storage.
It is unclear how this method compares to the quite a few rivals using variations of AMD’s 7000U-based Z1 sequence, such because the GPD Win 4, Asus ROG Ally, Steam Deck, and Lenovo Legion Go. Nevertheless, Emdoor demonstrated its product operating God of Struggle with out apparent efficiency points, and its menu display screen suggests the flexibility to play titles like Elden Ring, indicating AAA gaming capabilities just like the AMD-based handhelds.
One notable side of the EM-GP080MTL is its TDP, which ranges between 20 and 35 watts, whereas not one of the 7000U merchandise exceed 30 watts. This might give it a bonus over the competitors, albeit at the price of battery life (the Steam Deck, for example, conserves power by staying below 14W). Nevertheless, it is nonetheless untimely to make performance-per-watt comparisons between Meteor Lake and the AMD APUs.
Furthermore, the Arc graphics chip helps Intel’s XeSS upscaling expertise, which may improve picture high quality sufficiently for an 8-inch display screen at resolutions nicely under the native 1200p in supported video games, considerably bettering efficiency. Impressions from earlier this yr concerning this characteristic have been optimistic.
By way of kind issue, the hand held follows a typical design. It contains a full set of gamepad inputs, together with two again paddles and two USB-C ports. Two extra buttons on the entrance of the gadget permit for OS-level menu entry to manage energy profiles and different choices. Emdoor did not point out exterior GPU help, which another moveable PCs use for additional processing energy when docked.
The corporate has not supplied particulars on a launch date or worth but, however the EM-GP080MTL may probably launch in time for Meteor Lake’s December 14 debut, making it one of many first merchandise to showcase its capabilities. Intel’s upcoming CPU lineup marks essentially the most vital architectural change in years, that includes AI accelerators and a chiplet-based design. Whereas the sequence primarily targets notebooks, it has the potential to be well-suited for handheld gaming.
Picture credit score: Pocket book Italia
