The arrival of the Steam Deck marked a significant shift in the gaming world, allowing players to enjoy AAA games from the comfort of their beds using a handheld device. Gamers and enthusiasts have been eagerly awaiting news of a potential Steam Deck 2, especially given the major advancements in the APU industry over recent years. However, Valve has made it clear that the sequel won’t hit the market until there’s a “generational leap in compute performance,” according to a discussion with Reviews.org.
When AMD’s RDNA architecture came out, it was vastly superior in both performance and driver support to its Vega predecessors. In fact, by the time RDNA 2 rolled around, Valve had teamed up with AMD to craft a custom chip for the Steam Deck, dubbed Van Gogh.
The Steam Deck’s APU consists of four Zen 2 cores paired with an RDNA 2 iGPU built on eight Compute Units, a setup that’s been around since about 2020. Even amid last year’s OLED upgrade, no significant performance boosts were noted.
AMD’s latest Strix Point APUs, under the Ryzen AI 300 banner, draw on Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5 technologies. When questioned about a future update, Steam Deck’s designer, Lawrence Yang, remarked, “It’s important to us to make clear that we’re not following a yearly update cycle.”
Valve appears to be taking a cue from giants like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. For instance, the PS5 Pro, despite being the newest offering, still relies on the older Zen 2 architecture. While there have been strides in the handheld market, including Intel stepping in with its Lunar Lake (Core Ultra 200V) CPUs, none of these advancements are enough to warrant a new Steam Deck 2 just yet. Yang further elaborated, “We want to wait for a true leap in processing power and battery efficiency before launching the next Steam Deck.”
From a technical standpoint, current APUs under 15W haven’t shown much speed improvement since the days of Rembrandt (Ryzen 6000 Mobile). While Lunar Lake represents a positive trend with its design choices, it isn’t enough for Valve to pull the trigger on a Steam Deck 2. This next iteration could potentially pack more power and improved battery life. Valve is also exploring an ARM64 version of Proton, which means incorporating Arm cores alongside an Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA GPU might be a route forward, reminiscent of the Nintendo Switch’s setup.
