The Steam Deck really shook things up in the gaming world, offering the freedom to dive into AAA games from the comfort of your bed with a handheld device. Gamers and tech enthusiasts have been buzzing about the possibility of a Steam Deck 2, especially given the major advancements in APU technology over the last five years. However, Valve has been clear about setting expectations. In a chat with Reviews.org, they mentioned that we won’t see a Steam Deck 2 until there’s a significant leap in computing power.
Reflecting on AMD’s journey, their RDNA architecture has been a massive leap forward compared to their older Vega models, both in performance and driver capabilities. With RDNA 2, Valve collaborated with AMD to craft a custom chip known as Van Gogh, tailored specifically for the Steam Deck.
This chip packed in four Zen 2 cores alongside an RDNA 2 iGPU with eight compute units. Both these technologies date back to 2020 and, despite a recent OLED update, there haven’t been any noteworthy performance boosts.
AMD is already pushing the envelope with its Strix Point APUs (Ryzen AI 300), built on Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5. When asked about an updated Steam Deck, Lawrence Yang, one of the designers, emphasized, “We’ve intentionally avoided an annual release schedule.”
Valve seems to be taking a page from the playbooks of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Even the newest PS5 Pro clings to the same old Zen 2 architecture. While handheld technology has advanced and Intel has stepped up with its Lunar Lake (Core Ultra 200V) CPUs, Valve believes these enhancements aren’t quite enough to warrant a Steam Deck 2 just yet. Yang elaborated, “We’re waiting for a generational leap in computing that doesn’t compromise battery life before launching a true next-generation Steam Deck.”
Diving deeper into the tech specs, current APUs haven’t vastly improved in power efficiency under 15W since the days of Rembrandt (Ryzen 6000 Mobile). Intel’s Lunar Lake is a promising move, but if Valve doesn’t consider it groundbreaking, then the leap from their next device could be substantial in both performance and battery life. On another note, Valve is exploring an ARM64 version of Proton, hinting at the possibility of pairing Arm cores with a GPU from the likes of Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA, similar to the Nintendo Switch’s setup.
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