MSI Claw Handheld Gaming Console Powered By Intel Core Ultra CPUs With Up To 16 Cores & Arc iGPU, First Benchmarks Leak

The first benchmarks of MSI's upcoming Claw Handheld gaming console have been leaked which confirms that it features Intel Core Ultra CPUs.

Yesterday, MSI teased its upcoming handheld gaming console which is going to heat the gaming segment with a new high-end option. We got a brief look at the design and shape of the console and now we have the first benchmarks leaking out which also confirm the specifications for the device.

MSI's handheld gaming console is internally referred to as "CLAW" and this is a Dragon's Claw since MSI's mascot and brand icon itself is a Dragon. We don't know if this will be the final name for the handheld but Claw is unique. The specific variant that was tested is the MSI Claw "A1M" and it was based on the MS-1T41 motherboard.

In terms of specifications, the MSI Claw handheld gaming console features the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU. Intel hinted at the possibility of the handheld using Meteor Lake CPUs when it replied to MSI's post on X and now this seems to be confirmed. The 155H is a 16-core chip with 22 threads & clocks up to 4.8 GHz while also offering a respectable 3.80 GHz base clock. The chip has a 24 MB L3 cache and has a base TDP of 28W which can be tuned between 20W and an MTP of 115W.

The most important aspect of this chip for a gaming handheld is its integrated Arc Xe-LPG GPU. The iGPU features 8 Xe-Cores and clocks in at 2.25 GHz while offering support for all the latest APIs and features including XeSS upsampling along with Ray Tracing. It's a very capable chip from what has been shown so far and it will be interesting to see how the chip fares against the multitude of AMD Ryzen options in the market. Other specifications for the MSI Claw include 32 GB of LPDDR5x RAM.

In terms of performance, the MSI Claw handheld scored 2403 points in single-core & 11,543 points in the multi-core test. The ASUS ROG Ally scores very similar to its Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip and we can expect more optimizations for this console by the time it launches. There's no word yet on pricing and availability but MSI is expected to share more details at CES 2024 so stay tuned.

News Sources: @Olrak29_, @wxnod