Intel respon al MacBook Neo amb portàtils Windows de 699 dòlars i Wildcat Lake

Macbook Neo with its 599 price was described by a Su-CEO, SY Su-S, a shock to the entire market. Well, you know what? Maybe the market needed a shock, because here we are just a few months later, and we are looking at a smorgasbord. Of course, Series 3, code name, wildcat lake laptops that are putting affordable PCs back on the menu, boys, and I'm not talking cheap, plastic, chromebook wannabes. We just got hands-on with devices from basically all the major OEMs, and while the details differ from one to the next, the overall message is the same. These are premium feeling machines, with metal chassis, decent displays, strong battery life, and at least adequate performance, and coming in at prices that take direct aim at the MacBook Neo, with some even borrowing the idea of advertising $100 discounts for students, Intel also showed off this year a whole lineup of powerful gaming handhelds,

featuring their new ArcG3, a chip that was tuned specifically for compact PCs, and those performance and efficiency that according to Intel, vastly exceed the market leader AMD, just like I'm gonna vastly exceed your expectations for this segue to our sponsor. Now, probably about net expectations. Cooler master. Make sure you've got all the power you need for the latest GPUs with their MWE Gold 1000 V4 power supply. Use our link down below to learn more. If you somehow missed the mountain of memes, memory pricing has skyrocketed in recent months, driven by insatiable demand from the AI industry. That makes building an affordable computer these days very difficult, but not necessarily complicated. You just use less of it. That means that any laptop that competes with the MacBook Neo on price will also compete with the MacBook Neo on RAM. This is a bit of a downer because I don't relish the idea of running Windows

on an 8-gig machine any more than anyone else. But PC bookneos, as I'll be calling them, have a lot of other things going for them that could attract budget laptop shoppers. For one thing, you at least can configure them with more than just 8 gigs of RAM. Apple's A18 Pro, the SOC that sits at the heart of MacBook Neo, was originally designed for a phone rather than a laptop, so it's locked at just 8 gigabytes of memory, and it's not upgradable. By contrast, Core Series 3 supports up to 48 gigabytes of LPDDR5 X memory, or even 64 gigs of regular DDR5. And that right there is advantage number two. While it will cost you some performance, especially in workloads that rely on the GPU or the AI course, some PC bookneos, like this one from Lenovo, are built with memory slots, allowing them to be upgraded after the fact. Another highlight is performance.

The MacBook Neo is gonna have the advantage in short single threaded sprints, but it's weak cooling and less impressive multi-core performance means that Intel's six core designs should keep pace fairly well. And while Intel isn't making any bold claims with respect to GPU performance, Core Series 3 will still at least benefit from a decade deep catalog of lightweight games that can be enjoyed on a PC, but simply aren't compatible with Mac. The last highlight has gotta be variety. The MacBook Neo is the MacBook Neo. Screen size too small? That's nice. Don't like the keyboard? Too bad, but on the PC side, we've got a lot of choice, and we just got hands on time with half a dozen systems from the usual suspects, starting with one of our favorites, the Acer Swift Air 14. This one really feels like pretty much the complete package. Metal chassis, decent rigidity, long key travel on the keyboard with a satisfying trackpad,

not to mention a convenient one finger lift lid. Now, I know, I saw your comments, that's not a make or break feature for a lot of folks, but what it is, and the reason I look at it is a solid overall indicator of the attention to build quality because it does take a bit of extra time to get it right. Now, the display on this one probably isn't gonna win any awards, but it looks solid, and this is one of the few units that we've got pricing for. It's starting at $6.99 with 512 gigs of storage, which puts it right smack in line with the MacBook Neo. The other one we've got pricing on is probably the one that most people agree is straight up best in show, and it's the Dell XPS 13. I love the name, by the way. Goodbye, we copied Apple's branding. Hello, XPS, it's back baby,

and with characteristically outstanding chassis rigidity, and XPS were the keyboard and trackpad, and remarkably, a touchscreen, all starting at the same $6.99 or $5.99 for students. Welcome back, XPS, because as long as the 16 gig upgrade isn't priced out of whack, and the only two USB-C's for I-O isn't a deal breaker for you, this looks like the one to recommend for any relatives who want something decent that isn't gonna bring the bank. That is, unless the ASUS expert book has something to say about it. Build quality here feels darn near on par with the XPS, with a nice tactile albeit louder keyboard, and it also has a touchscreen alongside much more practical I-O, and a hidden stylist that you can use when it's flipped around in tablet mode. She is a bit of a fingerprint magnet, and we don't have pricing, so it's hard to compare directly, but if it's in line, this is one to keep your eye on.

HP's On-Ebook 5 didn't jump out at us, but seems like an overall solid machine, and MSI's modern 16S offered up the biggest screen of the bunch with a compact number pad as a bonus. Though again, without pricing for this one, it's hard to say how compelling it is. The last one I wanna highlight is the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i, not because it managed to wow us with its build quality. The deck flexes enough to be noticeable while typing, but because it's one of the few wildcat lake designs that we were able to confirm uses a sodium slot for memory expansion. Obviously, no one wants to be stuck with eight gigs of RAM forever, but a budget's a budget. So this machine feels like a great way to start with something affordable, and then hopefully expand your memory once things get a little bit less insane. And now to change gears and talk about something totally insane,

and that's Intel's new ArcG3 handheld gaming chips. How do I put this? These things look freaking awesome. Intel was showing off four different devices in the suite that we visited from MSI, ACER, and OneX Player. And while the details vary, like screen size, stick configuration, and whether they have a kickstand to detachable controllers and a flipping keyboard, what they all have in common is performance that is borderline game changing. ArcGraphics are all grown up, you guys. To tune their Panther-like chips for handheld gaming, Intel did a few things here. They dropped high performance P-course from four to two, XE display engines from three to two, and Thunderbolt 4 from four to two. This helped them save some power and hopefully some costs since they can use chips that didn't make the cut for laptops. The other big change to power is in management of it. Intelligent bias control V3.5 may not have the sexiest name,

but it does a couple of sexy things to dramatically improve frame rate stability. First, it prioritizes GPU frequency, which, okay, that's pretty obvious, but some of the other stuff is a lot less obvious. Like it prioritizes your E-course, your efficiency course, rather than your P performance course in gaming loads. What? Well, it turns out that dark-mon E-course are enough for most things, and by using those rather than the more power-hungry ones, it helps with that aforementioned GPU clock speed prioritization. The other big one is core parking. At 12 watts or less, this new chip will stop using its P-course altogether, which alongside Intel's new endurance gaming mode, which limits power and frame rate, can push your battery life as high as 11 hours in lightweight games. Like, I knew Panther Lake was efficient, but damn, and this efficiency manifests in other areas too, while Intel was proud to boast a 42% lead over AMD at 35 watts,

they know that most folks aren't using 35 watts away from the wall. Most people are gonna want to game it more like 17 watts, and they claim that they can achieve similar performance to the Ryzen AIC to extreme at half of the power, so you can get the same gaming experience just for way longer. And all of this is alongside the ongoing software improvements that Intel has been making to ARC, including XCSS Super Resolution, XCSS Multi-Frame Generation, XC Low Latency, and maybe most importantly, a rapidly growing level of engagement with game developers to provide day zero drivers to ensure that ARC customers are not left out in the cold when a new game launches. Another fun new feature is pre-compiled shaders. Intel's been working on a way to do all that for you, so when you first launch a game, you just jump right into the action. Sick. There is a catch.

The only handheld that I think we have pricing for so far is the Claw 8 EX AI Plus, an MSI's estimating around $1,500 US dollars. So these are gonna be expensive toys for grown-up boys, at least until the global DRAM shortage chills the freak out a little bit. Something that it seems like we'll need to keep waiting a little while longer for. But what you won't have to wait for is the segue to our sponsor, Cooler Master. Cooler Master's MWE Gold 1000V4 power supply is built with the latest generation of gaming systems in mind. Thanks to ATX 3.1, PCIe 5.1, and its native 12-volt connectors, it's gonna work with any current high-end GPU. They also have this cool feature called GPU shield that can help detect things like abnormal currents and respond in real time, alerting you with an LED indicator. That AD Plus Gold efficiency rating also lets you know

that you'll be saving a little bit of power even under a heavy load. The fans are built to be silent, so no more putting on headphones in an attempt to ignore that guttural hum coming from the bottom of your PC. And it's fully modular and backed by a 10-year warranty. So stay protected with intelligent GPU monitoring built for next-gen gaming hardware by checking out the link down below. If you guys wanna check out what the competition's up to, we've just did a video on the ROG Xbox LX20, an evolution that involves an OLED display, a bunch of tweaks to the overall fit and finish, and even TMR joysticks.