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The hypothetical Steam Deck 2 would get much better battery life if this effort pans out.
I mean its already pretty great.
I’d rather see the steam deck 2 use an SOC/ unified memory chip design
problem is it wouldnt be priced well if it did unless AMD already has plans for it.
its already gone public that the reason Microsoft held off on their handheld was they couldnt commit to 10M sales of of custom arm based SOC. Valve clearly would not either given steam deck sales, and the choice of hardware for the steam machine is telling.
problem is it wouldnt be priced well if it did unless AMD already has plans for it.
I’m on a Ryzen Strix Halo now (the 120gb variant) and I could easily see a more “tame” version of this powering a steam deck. I mean heck, mine is in a tablet chassis. I also have both the original and OLED steam decks, and use my OLED daily.
If Steam worked with AMD to develop something like what I’m on, but in the 32-64 gb range, they’ve got the generational improvement they’re looking for. And for the vast majority of games and use cases, it would just sip power. Unless I’m cranking this hog, it barely sips power. But when I choose to let’er rip, I can also do that.
My bet is that Steam is exploring both options (considering they did go AMD for the first decks). And yes I get that people won’t want to pay 3k for a gaming handheld. I think Strix Halo was a very interesting experiment and people are liking what they’re seeing.
the problem is, the tame version (Ai Max 388, 8c/40cu, or the 385 (8c/32cu) is still not optimal for handhelds, because of the fact that a large chunk of its power budget goes to the cpu, when the gpu needs it more.
pc handhelds are in a not so great position because the Z1 and Z2 generation of designs are functionally binned down laptop gpus, designed top down, rather than bottom up. Because AMD is on 8 core CCDs, it hamstrings the pc handhelds in the 10-15w use.
Since the Aerith CPU, the only other handheld thats AMD based thats actually reasonable is the Z2 Go, which is only featured in the Lenovo Legion Go 2 S, because both use 4c/8t cpus, due to intentionally picking an older cpu architecture, while having a beefier igpu. Its why gen over gen, pc handhelds are pretty stagnant as it cost nearly twice as much, while only offering 20% more performance, under the condition that you would have to increase the power target.
the problem the arm based options has is that the current companies in the spaces gpu drivers are not great(when Nvidia digits is having driver problems, you know damn well quacomm isn’t going to fare much better), and likely doubley so for modern games, especially ones that use modern features. Valve is too small for a company to get a good deal with AMD when it comes to a smaller semi custom cpu of their own, hence why Valve has essentially been using scrapped project parts from AMD since the steam deck. They were getting it at a lower cost because someone else likely commissioned the designed and canceled out of it. (supposedly it was Microsoft and the Aerith APU was originally meant to go into a surface product). The steam machine uses a borked laptop cpu, and a cut down low end desktop gpu, likely that was meant to also go into gaming laptops but ended up not getting sold because AMD has weak laptop gpu presence.
The best case scenario for a handheld would be a cpu who has 2 modern cores, and 2-4 efficiency/low power cores. Until AMD delivers on a CCD that fits the said target, handhelds will be stunted.
Valve is too small for a company to get a good deal with AMD when it comes to a smaller semi custom cpu of their own
Didnt they do that for the deck? And I don’t think we would disagree that the Deck has been a wild success.
I could totally see AMD working with valve to develop the next generation forking off the strix halo line. The power to performance is where it needs to be, and like, physically having the top of the line one right in front of me right now, I can play a game, not pushing it, for probably 2 hours on battery? Idk. I’ve got it set up for machine learning, but I should try gaming on it. But the real advantage of these chips isn’t the CPU/ GPU horse power its the unified memory. And that to me is the rub. Being able to share memory across CPU and GPU make the machine far more capable.
like I said, the deck was not their own design. it was a leftover design that they ended up picking up. If it was their design, then the Ryzen Z2A would not exist. and valve has already said they aren’t using the Aerith Plus cpu. If it’s their design, why would there be a plus model, and why would they not be using it.
And I don’t think we would disagree that the Deck has been a wild success.
yes, its a sucess, reletive to other PC handhelds, but Even valve could not sell 10M of them. the fact that AMD offered Microsoft a 10M min production run, and they declined it, its not going to be any better for valve. Valve just uses whats cheap for them.
For example with the steam machine, theres ABSOLUTELY no reason why they needed to use a seperate gpu, and seperate cpu, and not used shared memory, instead, forking out 24gb total memory (16/8 split) between hardware. It’s only like that because they had little choice.
if valve had an option, they would have liked to get the ryzen ai max 385, but it was never gonna happen due to pricing, so they had to opt to go seperate cpu/gpu theyre getting cheap.
Awesome!
