This product has been rumored for quite some time and the basic features of the product have been known, so those who follow events in the IT world in more detail cannot be surprised by the announcement of the console from Valve. It’s hard to say what led Valve to the idea of releasing such a product, perhaps the sales volumes of the Nintendo Switch, but perhaps this is just another step towards the goal of entering the hardware market more significantly.
Steam Deck is a mobile solution with a central display and controls along the edges. On the one hand, this solution is relatively small, on the other hand, it is large. The display reaches a diagonal of 7 ″ (1280 × 800), which is a little more than 6.2 ″ for the Switch and significantly more than, for example, the 5 ″ classic “good old” Playstation Vita.
In contrast to these solutions, Deck will be equipped with significantly more powerful hardware: four cores Zen 2 and 512 stream processors of RDNA 2 architecture, which in combination with LPDDR5 memories gives the potential for 3D performance significantly higher than offered by APU Cezanne (s 512 stream-processor architecture Vega+). Processor cores can run up to 3.5 GHz, graphics up to 1.6 GHz. The SoC / APU is capable of running in the TDP range of 4-15 watts.
The basic parameters of the kernel are similar to the APU Van Gogh. However, it was to be available exclusively to Microsoft, and about a year after its release (Microsoft’s product was discontinued so it was not released), it was to be replaced by the APU. Dragon Crest with slight improvements and availability to other customers. We can speculate whether the Deck is powered by him or not, it is something else that has only the same or similar basic parameters. If it were Dragon Crest, worth a wider range of TDP (4-15 watts), while the original Van Gogh should only support narrower (7-9 watts). It can therefore be assumed that certain improvements / tunings in power management have taken place.
The mentioned LPDDR5-5500 reaches a capacity of 16 GB (which is really enough for similar devices – as with large consoles) and storage – there are three options to choose from: 64GB eMMC or 256 / 512GB NVMe SSD. To make matters worse, there is a micro-SD slot.
The seven-inch display with a resolution of 1280 × 800 supports 60 Hz (it’s a pity that FreeSync is not mentioned, the APU certainly handles it) and a brightness of 400 nits, it has a touch interface and an ambient light sensor. The device measures 298 × 117 × 49 millimeters, weighs 669 grams and is powered by SteamOS 3.0. In addition to the interfaces already mentioned, there is USB-C with DisplayPort 1.4 Alt-mode support, which can handle up to 8K at 60Hz, 4K at 120Hz and supports USB 3.2. Audio can be obtained (except USB) from the device through built-in speakers, 3.5 mm connector (supports headset, but the microphone is also built-in) or via Bluetooth 5.0. There is also dual-band Wi-Fi, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, 2 × 2 MIMO, IEEE 802.11a / b / g / n / ac.
Prices are set at $ 399, $ 529 and $ 649 depending on storage capacity. Steam announced availability in December, but the first pre-orderers report that they have confirmed delivery by the beginning of 2022.
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