MSI’s Claw handheld console is off to a bumpy start, with many gaming crashing at startup. According to YouTuber Cary Golomb (reviewing the device), multiple games including Batman Arkham Knight refuse to run on the Intel-powered handheld. The MSI Claw leverages the Core Ultra 7 155H processor, a 16 core (6+8+2) chip paired with Arc Alchemist graphics (Xe-LPG). The iGPU doesn’t perform well in old DX9 and DX11 games like the Arc A-series graphics cards due to sparse driver support.
The Arc Xe-LPG GPU on the Claw consists of 8 Xe Cores which translates to 1,024 shaders. It also features fixed-function hardware, including ray-tracing and geometry units. By default, the GPU has a peak clock of 2.25GHz, but we’ll likely see it reduced to 2GHz or lower on the Claw. The P-cores on the CPU top out at 4.8GHz, but the handheld should have a much lower limit (~3-3.5GHz).
Intel’s software team has been working hard to perfect the Arc graphics driver, but there’s still plenty of optimizing left to do. A while back, we tested the Arc A750 with mixed results. The Alchemist GPU works (just), but suffers from strange audio glitches, stuttering, and a minor case of “failed to launch” in several old and niche titles.
Most handhelds, including the Steam Deck, Legion Go, and the ROG Ally, leverage AMD’s Ryzen APUs with RDNA 2/3 graphics. The Radeon graphics driver is far from perfect, but it hasn’t given handheld gamers any major headaches yet. Moreover, with driver-level support for variable shading, spatial upscaling (RSR), and Frame Generation (Fluid Motion Frames), there’s plenty of room for optimizing even the most intensive PC games.
