The arrival of the Steam Deck marked a significant milestone in the gaming world, offering the pleasure of diving into top-tier games from the comfort of your bed with a handheld device. Gamers and tech enthusiasts are buzzing with anticipation over the possibility of a Steam Deck 2, especially given the substantial advancements in APU technology over the last five years. However, Valve has made it clear in an interview with Reviews.org that we shouldn’t expect a Steam Deck 2 anytime soon. They emphasize that it won’t be released until there’s a “generational leap in compute.”
The advancements from AMD’s RDNA architecture, compared to their older Vega models, were huge, especially in terms of performance and driver support. When RDNA 2 was released, Valve collaborated with AMD to create a custom chip for the Steam Deck, known as Van Gogh.
The current Steam Deck’s APU is equipped with four Zen 2 cores and an RDNA 2 iGPU featuring eight Compute Units, with both architectures having been around since at least 2020. Even the OLED update that came last year didn’t deliver any significant performance enhancements.
In discussing future prospects, Lawrence Yang, one of the designers of the Steam Deck, commented on the timeline for a new version, noting, “It is important to us, and we’ve tried to be really clear, we are not doing the yearly cadence.” This cautious approach mirrors the strategy adopted by industry giants like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. The latest PS5 Pro, for instance, still relies on the older Zen 2 architecture. While handheld gaming has seen some step-ups, including Intel’s entry with its Lunar Lake (Core Ultra 200V) CPUs, these changes aren’t enough to warrant a new Steam Deck iteration just yet. Yang explained, “So we really do want to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before we ship the real second generation of Steam Deck.”
From a technical standpoint, today’s APUs are not significantly faster at the sub-15W level than their predecessors like the Rembrandt (Ryzen 6000 Mobile). While Lunar Lake is a positive development with its innovative design, it’s not enough to move Valve toward releasing a Steam Deck 2. However, when it does arrive, it may be a significant leap in both performance and battery life. Valve is also exploring an ARM64 version of Proton, hinting at the possibility of using Arm cores coupled with a GPU solution from Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA, much like the Nintendo Switch.
