Valve is bringing much more than an "incrementally better" update to the Steam Deck - here's what we know about the handheld's huge tech upgrade

Despite the aging AMD APU that powers the Steam Deck, it continues to be one of the best PC gaming handhelds on the market — setting the gold standard for its competitors like the Asus ROG Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go to follow.

And it’s because of this that, in a recent interview with Reviews.org, Steam Deck designers Lawrence Yang and Yazan Aldehyyat confirmed that the planned successor to the device will boast some serious tech upgrades. According to Yang, Valve isn’t planning on “incrementally better” yearly releases. Instead, Valve is planning “to wait for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life before [it ships] the real second generation of Steam Deck.”

This all matches with what we currently know about the Steam Deck 2’s release, thanks to the multitude of reports discussing the Steam Deck successor. Back in March 2023 for instance, Yang told the publication Rock Paper Shotgun that "a true next-gen Deck with a significant bump in horsepower wouldn’t be for a few years."

During Tokyo Game Show 2023, Valve coder Pierre-Loup Griffais told CNBC that the team is hard at work on the current Steam Deck, but in terms of what comes next, "we’re kind of looking at this performance target that we have as a stable target for a couple years." Meaning that we won’t be seeing the Steam Deck 2 until at least 2026.

This all makes sense since Australia finally got its hands on the Steam Deck. Before, gamers had to purchase the handheld from third-party importers, but now they can officially buy the device through Valve itself.

The future of Valve’s Steam Deck 2 is bright

Though Valve hasn’t stated what kind of chip they’re looking to power the Steam Deck 2, we at least know that it’ll definitely pack quite the punch. AMD’s latest mobile processor, the Ryzen 7 8840U, already has a leg up on the currently used Aerith AMD APU in terms of power.

According to Batman Arkham Knight test results from X (formerly Twitter) user Cary Golomb, the new processor supports 7% more frames per second (fps) than Steam Deck’s current model, with the 8840U getting 51.7fps and the Aerith 48.3fps. Keep in mind that this is off 10W of power, which is what the Steam Deck uses now — in other words, this new mobile chip can squeeze out more performance at the same level of battery life efficiency.

Obviously this won’t be the chip that Valve goes with, as it’ll be wildly outdated by the time the Steam Deck 2 drops. But it’s certainly promising that the components it needs to fulfill the promise of a massive tech spike will be waiting once Valve is ready.

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