AMD is already working on the SoC for Steam Deck 2, the second generation of Valve’s gaming laptop, which would be updated with an APU with Zen 4 cores and RDNA 3 GPU, sharing the design with the announced Phoenix Point series.
Steam Deck 2 would have a new APU with Zen 4 CPU and RDNA 3 graphics
AMD’s Van Gogh SoC currently powers Steam Deck, combining Zen 2 CPU cores and an integrated RDNA 2 graphics card. This seems to be enough for current games, but Steam Deck, irremediably’ will have to be constantly updated to stay current and can run more and more demanding games.
With this goal, AMD would borrow the Phoenix Point design, the APUs announced for laptops, to design an SoC for the upcoming second-generation Steam Deck.
As we well know, the Phoenix Point APU processors are combining Zen 4 cores and RDNA 3 graphics, with a planned release date of 2023. The performance jump should be noticeable, especially since two generations of Zen cores would be upgraded, going from Zen 2 to Zen 4.
The information comes from Moore’s Law is Dead, which has only heard of AMD’s plans for a new SOC that will act as a successor to Van Gogh. This SOC shares a lot of similarities with the Phoenix Point APUs.
Apparently, this Steam Deck 2 SoC would be a low-power derivative of Phoenix Point, which they call an “Ultra Low Power & Compact” version.
One of the outstanding tasks to be solved in the second generation Steam Deck is that of autonomy. Although there are no details on this, AMD will have to work especially on power consumption. It is said that the process node will be 4 nm, which would help achieve this goal.
Specifications and expected performance
Moore’s Law is Dead says the die size will be 110-150 mm2, smaller than the Van Gogh SoC. It would have 4 cores and 8 threads with a clock speed reaching 4 GHz, a 30% increase in clock speed over Van Gogh. The number of Compute Units of the GPU would be 8 units.
Memory support would also be greatly improved, with support for LPDDR5-6400 or LPDDR5X-8533 modules.
How does this translate into performance? We’re talking about a 50% increase in CPU performance and a 60% increase in graphics performance, which should have a noticeable impact on gaming performance. This additional performance could also give Valve the possibility to increase the screen resolution in the next model. We’ll keep you posted.