More powerful Steam Decks will happen, Valve says

Valve wants to create new upgraded Steam Deck models in the future that offer better performance and value.

The PC gaming hardware market evolves at a blistering pace and every year NVIDIA and AMD seem to release new-and-improved GPU and CPU tech. Valve wants its Steam Deck to keep up with these fast iteration cycles by designing and releasing beefier models. This is just the beginning for the new PC-handheld frontier.

When asked in a recent IGN interview (transcribed by TweakTown) if new Steam Deck models could happen, Valve boss Gabe Newell said:

"Absolutely. That's the great thing about the PC market, is that it just continues. A year from now AMD is going to have better parts, and all the component suppliers are going to expand capacity, expand performance, and reduce cost."

"We're absolutely hoping to ride that as hard as we can. That's part of the great thing about being in the PC space is that everybody is essentially driving everybody else's price-performance improvements over time."

• Valve has no plans to raise Steam Deck price to match high demand
• Valve plans to support the Steam Deck for a 'long time to come'

The Steam Deck definitely could use improvements. The device predictably doesn't have great battery life and the internal fan is almost always running. It's still early days for this type of device, and performance will only get better as more specialized chips are released.

Valve worked closely with AMD to co-design a custom Ryzen SoC specifically made for the Steam Deck. The result is an APU with a 4-core Zen 2 CPU at up to 3.5GHz and an RDNA 2.0 GPU with 8 CUs capable of 1.6GHz speeds. The SoC is capable of playing games at 45-60FPS at medium settings on the 7-inch 800px display.