I hate to expect the price.
The price will be really good. My expectations are equal or even lower than the original launch price of Steam Deck. Everyone will buy it and Linux will get 100% market share. I am Nostradamus and this will happen in the next 2 years.
With more cores, threads, and memory, this AMD Gainsborough APU seems a likely candidate for Steam Deck 2 but testing is clearly in the early stages.
Here’s hoping this is completely wrong, and any potential Steam Deck 2 won’t be on x86…
Why not x86? It can basically match arm for perf per watt and its perf per dollar is better.
It only can on the high end. There are no x86 CPUs that’d allow you to play lightweight games while the entire system is pulling just 3 watts.
Not to mention the difference in heat generation. Even at comparable power use, the Steam Deck is loud and getting hot, while something like an AYN Thor is silent and barely warm to the touch.
Which is why every single mobile and low power device in existence is based on either ARM or RISC-V.
Another problem is that x86 is needlessly expensive, because Intel and AMD have a duopoly. You either buy at their insane prices, or you don’t buy at all.
It’s an outdated ISA that is still only used, because the two giants abuse their market power. Even if x86 could match ARM 1-to-1, there’d be no reason to stick with x86, just for the price difference alone.
Is emulation so good already that compatibility isn’t a concern anymore?
Hmm, kind of?
It’s already very good, and improving practically every week.
Right now, you can play The Witcher 3 at 720p, medium settings, at a stable 30 fps on Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 handhelds. Or the same settings in Cyberpunk 2077 on Snapdragon 8 Elite handhelds.
Which is basically what it runs like on a Steam Deck, except you get better battery life, a smaller and lighter device, and the device itself is anywhere between 2 to 5 times cheaper.
Now, keep in mind 8 Elite aren’t even the best supported SoCs (8 Gen 2 is among them though), and we’re still at least a couple years away from any new Valve handheld.
And Valve has just released an ARM device with an ARM build of SteamOS.
At this point I’d say it almost doesn’t make any sense to build a Steam Deck successor on x86.
I’m not very concerned about performance. I’d be pleased with a lighter, quiter, less expensive and more battery-efficient device that reaches the same performance (something ARM promises) but I expect a very large chunk of the available PC library (Steam and non-Steam) to run on it, through the emulation layer, and through the OS compatibility layer.
Speaking from my experiences, no, not yet.
On which device?
The Steam Deck 2 will have 2 CPUs, one ARM chip and one x86 for backwards compatibility, in case there are problems running specific games on ARM. I am Nostradamus and this will happen in the next 2 years.
hell yeah
