AMD APU for Steam Deck 2 would get Zen 4 and RDNA 3

If they can couple this with an increase in battery life, I am all in.

 

They could in theory down clock it to get a similar performance to the Steamdeck 1 with lower TDP

 

Already a Steam Deck 2?
I still don't know if it's a bad or good news

 

I'd say it's good. The first deck was a learning experience for Valve and they have to work out the UX issues. They didn't want to put too much R&D into it, in case it flopped. I imagine Zen4 is also a significant enough upgrade to yield much better results. Also, many reviewers aren't going to bother re-reviewing the Deck after their initial review, and there has already been a lot of major OS updates.

Now, if Valve keep releasing a new Deck every single year, that might be a point of concern.

 

Unlike consoles the new games will keep working on old Steam Deck and old games will work on new Steam Deck. Releasing new Steam Deck is not a problem as long as they keep updating the OS and client of the old Steam Decks. Steam Deck 1 will run games slower but if it's updated it will run games.

 

Yeah, it's good to remember these are computers rather than traditional console hardware. I have a 1st gen GPD win max that is slower than the steam deck and still plays most titles at low resolution/details. I suspect the original steam deck will still be very usable for years to come.

 

That is true but it can leave a bitter taste to people who buy these and find out how quickly and dramatically they get obsoleted, assuming the price doesn't change much.

 

That is bound to happen in this industry the new toy you bought gets replaced very fast but that does not mean its useless. Deck1 should be pretty capable quite some time and valve will probably keep supporting it.

 

I knew someone was going to say that. For handheld devices, that's not so much the case. They evolve significantly slower, since games are becoming more demanding and people are expecting higher resolutions at a rate faster than what hardware can keep up, but these devices are also limited by battery life and heat dissipation. As I always say, architectures don't scale linearly, so, a 15W APU might not have the same performance-per-watt as a 65W APU. That's why ARM still dominates the mobile space, but, Valve couldn't use an ARM chip because the translation to x86 would add too much overhead, which they are already compensating for via Proton. Not to mention there aren't any fully open GPU drivers for ARM platforms - something a lot of Guru3D readers might not know, but Valve actively contributes toward AMD's open-source drivers, and they put in legitimately good work.

So anyway, the Deck 2 is likely to be a significant performance increase, which is fine since the first was more of a trial for Valve. As I said, mobile doesn't evolve as quickly, so if Valve were to consistently make major performance improvements after each generation, that would show they're deliberately holding back for the sake of encouraging people to keep upgrading.

 

I would say they will be stupid to not release a new steamdeck every gen of CPUs and GPUs, if they do not gpd win and the rest will , they are laptops on a handheld casing after all .

 

I assume this story has come about from a interview Gabe did back in Feb this year when he mentioned the SD2 in relation to how hardware changes and how Valve will continue to follow those changes, but he did not specifically state a SD2 was sitting in his back pocket ready to roll......so your SD1 is safe for a good few more years yet.

 

This is exciting haven't pulled the trigger on the steam deck yet due to finances but this is great if there's a better model available when I'm ready for it.

 

If they release a product that is polished and powerful enough to not need frequent updates, it will be cheaper and therefore sell better. All they have to do is be within 10% of the performance and battery life of competitors to remain relevant, even if a model is 2 years old. That shouldn't be that hard for them, seeing as they're getting custom chips from AMD whereas their competitors tend to use off-the-shelf parts.

 

Since I might have time at work for such silliness, it's good to know that they are pushing the project still ("continued support" at least until SD2 is released), and that apparently, it's successfull enough to make SD2 valid.
Generally, I still would wish you could play every PC game on this, since in theory, it should be possible. Unless you come to the point where you need about 14 different launchers for 12 games...