The last time we heard Valve talk about hardware, it was waiting for a ‘generational leap‘ before it commits to a sequel to the Steam Deck. As the most popular PC gaming handheld on the market, there is plenty of anticipation for whatever follows it up. Valve’s rivals have been busy releasing new renditions of their alternatives, including the ROG Ally X and an expected launch of new Lenovo devices like the Legion Go S.
AMD’s keynote is taking place in a few hours (at the time of writing), and some leaks point towards a new Z2 processor to feature in a Steam Deck model. However, this has now been shut down by a developer at Valve. This was to be expected of the ROG Ally and Legion Go (both of which use the existing Z1 line-up), but don’t expect to see it in the Steam Deck.
AMD Ryzen Z2 series is not coming to the Steam Deck
According to Pierre-Loup Griffais, a Valve coder who is “currently working on [the] Steam Deck,” there will be no Z2 Steam Deck – shutting down rumors starting to circulate online via a leak of AMD’s CES 2025 presentation. In case you need to verify, Pierre is listed on Valve’s list of Software Engineering employees here.
For starters, we already know that the current Steam Deck models aren’t as powerful as their competition, but its lightweight nature and easy-to-use UI with SteamOS remain a massive benefit versus the competition that relies on Windows. Valve says the Steam Deck uses a 6nm AMD APU with Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architecture for the CPU and GPU respectively. It’s safe to say this isn’t on the level of even the Z1 series – the Z1 extreme for example features Zen 4 and RDNA 3, the latter for the Radeon 780M iGPU.
Now with Z2 processors slated for Q1 2025 based on current leaks and speculation, we hope to see a massive boost in the performance of upcoming handhelds, but the Steam Deck won’t be part of that wave.
