We recently published our MSI Claw 8 AI+ A2VM review , which is the only handheld gaming device to utilize the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V "Lunar Lake" CPU, featuring four E-cores and four P-cores, paired with the Intel Arc 140V Xe2 GPU. During our testing, we ran the handheld device at its stock, out-of-the-box settings to see what the results are in gaming and how it compares to other, mostly AMD-based, handhelds. However, Intel notified us about performance levels used in testing, and that the official specification for Lunar Lake states that PL2 should always be at least 1 W higher than PL1, or always set at 37 W (the maximum TDP value for Lunar Lake chips). This means that whenever a CPU can extract an additional boost, it will, yielding up to 30% more performance, as we have seen in our own testing.

Initially, we used the default setting, which matches PL2 to PL1. However, Intel noted that when PL2 is set to at least a single W higher than PL1, there is an expected 10% performance increase across the suite of games, but depending on the scenario, it can lead to a 30% increase in some instances. An update has arrived for the MSI Center M app, which locks PL2 to always be at least 1 W higher than PL1. As a result, you can no longer match the two. It was only possible before the update. In our retest, Cyberpunk 2077 and Space Marine 2 achieved nearly a 30% performance uplift with this setting. The Lunar Lake-based MSI Claw AI+ A2VM handheld is the highest-performing device we have tested across the board, even surpassing AMD-based devices in our testing suite. In other games, baseline improvement is set at 10%, just as Intel had notified. Our testing confirmed that Lunar Lake is now the most powerful gaming CPU for handheld devices. Below you can find the updated performance graphs.