The arrival of the Steam Deck completely transformed the landscape of gaming, allowing players to dive into high-level, AAA titles from the comfort of their own beds on a portable device. It’s a revolutionary concept, and the buzz around the potential release of a Steam Deck 2 has gamers and tech enthusiasts on the edge of their seats. However, Valve has been pretty upfront about the fact that we shouldn’t expect the Steam Deck 2 to grace store shelves until there’s a significant leap in computing power. This was highlighted in an interview with Reviews.org.
AMD’s RDNA architecture marked a substantial step forward from its previous Vega line, offering considerably better performance and improved driver support. With their RDNA 2 launch, Valve, in collaboration with AMD, rolled out a specialized chip for the Steam Deck known as Van Gogh.
The original Steam Deck’s APU packed four Zen 2 cores along with an eight Compute Unit-based RDNA 2 iGPU. Both these architectures are not exactly new, having been around since at least 2020. Even with the introduction of the OLED model last year, users didn’t see much of a boost in performance.
Moving forward, AMD’s new Strix Point APUs (Ryzen AI 300), built on Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5, have caught attention. But when prompted about a future release, Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang made it clear they are not sticking to a yearly upgrade cycle. “It’s important to us to clarify that we don’t follow an annual update schedule,” he stated.
Valve seems to be adopting a strategy similar to the big players like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. For instance, the newer PS5 Pro is still reliant on the older Zen 2 architecture. While there have been advancements in handheld technology, with Intel entering the scene with its Lunar Lake (Core Ultra 200V) CPUs, these aren’t yet compelling enough to warrant a new Steam Deck, as per Yang’s comments. “We’re waiting for a significant leap in computing power that doesn’t compromise battery life before we release a true second generation of the Steam Deck,” he added.
On a more technical note, today’s APUs aren’t significantly faster than the previous Rembrandt (Ryzen 6000 Mobile) models when operating at less than 15W. Intel’s Lunar Lake is certainly a promising development due to its design, but if Valve doesn’t deem it sufficient, any future Steam Deck could herald substantial improvements in both power and battery efficiency. There’s also the intriguing possibility of Valve exploring an ARM64 version of Proton, which could involve using Arm cores together with a GPU from AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA, much like the Nintendo Switch.
