When Valve launched the Steam Deck, it was like opening the door to a new chapter in gaming. Imagine playing top-tier, AAA games while comfortably stretched out in bed on a handheld device. Naturally, the gaming community is buzzing with excitement at the mere thought of a Steam Deck 2, especially given the significant advancements in APU technology over the last few years. However, Valve has been upfront about the fact that we’re unlikely to see a second version until there’s a significant leap in processing power—at least according to a chat they had with Reviews.org.
The evolution in AMD’s RDNA architecture marked a significant upgrade over the previous Vega models, especially in terms of performance and driver support. With RDNA 2, they even created a unique chip for the Steam Deck, which they codenamed Van Gogh.
The original Steam Deck featured an APU with four Zen 2 cores and an RDNA 2 iGPU based on eight Compute Units. Although the tech dates back to 2020, even after an OLED update last year, we didn’t really see any performance boosts.
Switching gears to AMD’s cutting-edge Strix Point APUs, known as Ryzen AI 300, which incorporate Zen 5 and RDNA 3.5, we circle back to the Steam Deck’s future. When asked about a potential successor, Lawrence Yang, one of the designers, emphasized, “It’s crucial to us, and we’ve been transparent about it—we’re not adhering to an annual release schedule.”
Valve seems to be taking cues from the big players like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. For instance, the PS5 Pro still relies on the older Zen 2 architecture. While Intel’s entry with its Lunar Lake CPUs is stirring things up, the advances don’t yet warrant a new Steam Deck. Yang clarified that the team is looking for a significant boost in computational power, all without cutting into battery life, before rolling out the true next-gen Steam Deck.
From a more technical standpoint, today’s APUs don’t offer much more speed at sub-15W levels than those from the Rembrandt days (Ryzen 6000 Mobile). Intel’s Lunar Lake is innovative in its design, and if that’s not enough to convince Valve, then the eventual Steam Deck 2 could bring drastic improvements in both performance and battery longevity. There’s also talk that Valve is exploring an ARM64 version of Proton, implying they could pair Arm cores with a GPU from Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA, similar to the Nintendo Switch’s setup.
