Discussion Steam Deck 2 handheld ?

[marees]

AMD recently revealed FSR 4 & touted power savings for handheld gaming.

AMD plans for FSR4 to be fully AI-based — designed to improve quality and maximize power efficiency

The team in charge has already been working on this for 9–12 months.

www.tomshardware.com

Zen 5 reviews mentioned a generational advance in power modes (especially for handhelds)

https://twitter.com/x/status/1823422603643527174

RDNA 3.5 is supposed to be more efficient in low power scenarios & incorporates lessons learnt from Samsung's mobile RDNA 2

AMD's tweaked RDNA 3.5 GPU is solely focused on improving mobile gaming performance

There are plenty of little changes under the hood to help the graphics processor do more for less power.

www.pcgamer.com

The current strix point is unlikely to be used for handheld gaming due to latency between zen 5 ccd & zen 5c ccd

Upcoming Kracken / kraken / krackan point APU has a single ccx & 8 cores in total ( 3+ 5 or 4 + 4 ) plus 8 or 12 CUs.

AMD to Launch Affordable 'Kraken Point' Zen 5 Mobile in 2025

The company is targeting Intel's Lunar Lake and Qualcomm's eight-core Snapdragon X chips.

www.extremetech.com

Putting all these together the above could be an ideal APU for next steam handheld. Will valve bite though ?

The Steam Deck 2 might be significantly faster than its predecessor.
Valve has clarified that the Steam Deck 2 will likely not be hitting shelves anytime soon until a "generational leap in compute" takes place, as reported in an interview with Reviews.org.

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-...tm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter.com

 

[marees]

Latest rumour on CPU cores for Kraken Point

https://twitter.com/x/status/1838246179261583440

 

[Saylick]

The Steam Deck 2 might be significantly faster than its predecessor.
Valve has clarified that the Steam Deck 2 will likely not be hitting shelves anytime soon until a "generational leap in compute" takes place, as reported in an interview with Reviews.org.

Given that Valve wants a generational leap in hardware, I think it's safe to say that the Steam Deck 2 will be significantly faster. It will likely take N4P coming down in price a little bit more before it happens, though. I'm thinking it will be another 2 years before we get even a whiff of the Steam Deck 2.

It should have 4 Zen5c cores and 8 RDNA 4 CUs at a minimum. Not sure if they will try to cram in 8 cores, but if the die space had to be spent it may be more prudent to spend it on Infinity Cache rather than 4 more CPU cores.

 

[marees]

Given that Valve wants a generational leap in hardware, I think it's safe to say that the Steam Deck 2 will be significantly faster. It will likely take N4P coming down in price a little bit more before it happens, though. I'm thinking it will be another 2 years before we get even a whiff of the Steam Deck 2.

It should have 4 Zen5c cores and 8 RDNA 4 CUs at a minimum. Not sure if they will try to cram in 8 cores, but if the die space had to be spent it may be more prudent to spend it on Infinity Cache rather than 4 more CPU cores.

I don't expect RDNA 4 to be in any igpu

Valve might as well jump to RDNA 5 + Zen 5. The advantage could be that they share an APU with Microsoft who would be looking for hardware that supports Direct ML & advanced machine learning etc.

8 CUs is too low imo. 12 or even better, 16, would be ideal

 

[Saylick]

I don't expect RDNA 4 to be in any igpu

Valve might as well jump to RDNA 5 + Zen 5. The advantage could be that they share an APU with Microsoft who would be looking for hardware that supports Direct ML & advanced machine learning etc.

8 CUs is too low imo. 12 or even better, 16, would be ideal

Ehh, I wouldn't count on RDNA 5. That's like a 2026 product, and consoles generally aren't on the cutting edge architecture.

12 or 16 CUs sounds nice, but how are they going to feed it bandwidth and power? I don't think there's enough silicon or wattage to make it worthwhile.

 

[marees]

Valve says its 'not really fair to your customers' to create yearly iterations of something like the Steam Deck, instead it's waiting 'for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life'​

News
By Dave James
published 21 hours ago
Valve may not be creating yearly iterations of the Steam Deck, but it's having to give the same answer every year.

This almost precisely echoes what Yang told me around the launch of the OLED version last year: "It needs to be the right time," he tells me. "And we have to have the right parts for it. So we really want there to be a generational leap in performance for us to be able to comfortably call it a Steam Deck 2.

"We're keeping an eye on chips and APU that are available. The things that are available right now are not right yet. But maybe in two to three years, there will be something that is good in the same way that our current APU is, in terms of the power envelope, with performance, with battery draw. All of those things have to be in the sweet spot for a real move to a new chip."

"For us to make a second version," Aldehayyat then chimes in, "we will be able to have a substantial performance improvement while sticking to a similar kind of power range and weight to battery life. And that's not going to happen next year or the year after that. It's probably going to be more than that."

Valve says its 'not really fair to your customers' to create yearly iterations of something like the Steam Deck, instead it's waiting 'for a generational leap in compute without sacrificing battery life'

Valve may not be creating yearly iterations of the Steam Deck, but it's having to give the same answer every year.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Saylick]

The more I think about it, the more I start to think that N3E or even N3P may be the node they go with. N6 to N4P only gets you to 50% more performance/watt, which is a nice bump but also closer to what a mid-cycle refresh will offer these days (I'm looking at you, PS5 Pro). N6 to N3E/P would get them closer to a true doubling.

 

[Mopetar]

Valve might as well jump to RDNA 5 + Zen 5.

Is there even going to be an RDNA5? I'd heard that AMD is unifying RDNA and CDNA so they don't have separate architectures to produce. Maybe that's overkill for an APU, but so is doing separate GPU architecture design for an APU if it's not going to be high volume.

There's also nothing stopping Valve from releasing a mid-generation "pro" model akin to what console manufacturers have been doing for a while now.

 

[marees]

Is there even going to be an RDNA5? I'd heard that AMD is unifying RDNA and CDNA so they don't have separate architectures to produce. Maybe that's overkill for an APU, but so is doing separate GPU architecture design for an APU if it's not going to be high volume.

There's also nothing stopping Valve from releasing a mid-generation "pro" model akin to what console manufacturers have been doing for a while now.

I am guessing RDNA 5 would be renamed as UDNA 1

Seems like Valve is reluctant to release a 4nm refresh.

Probably waiting for Microsoft's handheld plans & reuse the same just like they did with Van Gogh