Valve’s Steam Deck launched back in 2022, and the handheld recently celebrated its third birthday with the news that it makes up around half of the PC handheld market share. Despite all the competition, Valve remains on top, and it looks like it will stay that way for some time. The prospect of a Steam Deck 2 still seems some way away, with the company looking for a “generational leap” before it commits to a sequel.

However, new shipping data posted online suggests that work is being done behind the scenes on the Steam Deck’s custom APU, which currently features AMD’s Zen 2 and RDNA 2 CPU and GPU architectures, respectively. Whether this could mean a refreshed model remains to be seen, but it wouldn’t be the first time – the OLED variant features a couple of improvements outside of the display, too.

Steam Deck Aerith APU could be getting a ‘Plus’ model

The first thing to understand is that the Steam Deck’s custom AMD APU is named Aerith (after the Final Fantasy VII character, in case it rings a bell). At this point, the hardware is relatively outdated, considering that AMD has gone on to launch newer architecture – RDNA 4 is around the corner with the new RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT cards.

According to a shipping listing on NBD Data, there is mention of an ‘Aerith Plus’ product, which has lead speculation that Valve could actually be working on a faster APU. Within the description, we can see that the hardware could run at 20W with a CPU clock speed of 3.8GHz. For comparison, existing Steam Deck models run between 4-15W with a boost clock speed of 3.5GHz for the CPU.

Admittedly, this is little data to go off for the moment, but it could be a sign of life for a new version of the Steam Deck. Based on the name along, ‘Aerith Plus’ could be a revised model rather than a brand-new generation, though this is pure speculation for the time being. So far, Valve has shyed away from revised variants – in contrast to its competition – the one thing we do know though is that Steam Deck’s most-wanted upgrade is performance, according to a recent poll we ran.

About the Author

Charlie Noon

Charlie is the Affiliate manager for PC Guide. He has a vast understanding of most PC hardware and consumer essentials, using his knowledge to provide the best products and the biggest deals.