Is Valve working now on Steam Deck 2? Rumors suggest leaked AMD chip could power next-gen handheld
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- An AMD ‘Gainsborough’ chip is leaked in a benchmark
- Codename suggests this could be Steam Deck 2’s CPU
- It’s still unclear whether the performance meets the requirements, and there are also questions about the timing, but it’s still an indication that Valve could be exploring the hardware to use in its portable sequel.
We’ve seen a chip that could supposedly power Steam Deck 2, which serves as an indication that Valve could already be working on its portable sequel.
TechPowerUp detected that development with an AMD ‘Gainsborough’ APU was leaked through OpenBenchmarking. It’s an engineering sample chip with 6 cores (12 threads) and a base clock of 2.4 GHz, but what ties it to Valve’s next-gen handheld?
Well, it’s tenuous, of course, so arm yourself with plenty of seasoning, but the word Gainsborough is the key here, as Valve has used Final Fantasy VII-inspired codenames for the Steam Deck silicon before. That is, Aerith and Sephiroth, and Gainsborough is Aerith’s last name, as noted by well-known GPU leaker Kepler.
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This Gainsborough chip was apparently paired with 24GB of system memory for testing, although that doesn’t necessarily reflect a potential update for Steam Deck 2 in this regard; It’s a shaky idea given the RAM crisis and how long it could last. All of this means that this memory configuration is currently what AMD or Valve are testing the chip with.
There are benchmark results here (of course, it’s on a benchmarking site), and we can see that this new AMD APU scores 3508 points on Furmark at a resolution of 1024 x 768. That’s a bit faster than the Steam Deck, which scores 3323 (albeit at 1280 x 800).
Analysis: Benchmarking Clarification
If the benchmarking doesn’t seem impressive, it’s based on raw numbers, but remember that these are very early tests with drivers who are still a long way from fitness. In other words, expect the Gainsborough APU to be much faster than this when the chip is fully finished and the drivers are properly refined.
Overall, at this stage it’s hard to read exactly what this benchmark is telling us, but the fact that it’s already faster than the current CPU on the Steam Deck is promising. Although some players still argue that it looks lackluster and that this wouldn’t be enough of a generational upgrade for Valve’s portable sequel.
Additionally, this CPU is expected to debut in late 2027 or 2028 and frankly, it seems a little early for Steam Deck 2 given what’s going on with the RAM crisis (in terms of keeping the retail price down). Additionally, when a Valve engineer recently talked about Steam Deck 2, Pierre-Loup Griffais was very cautious on the subject of a possible release timeframe, and the hardware still sounded very much up in the air.
For hardware cards to play as tight as this is not surprising, however, and this does not rule out Valve currently exploring the Gainsborough chip for a possible Steam Deck 2 release towards the end of the decade.
We’ll see, but for now, I’d treat this one with a lot more caution than the average rumor. Nonetheless, it’s still a tantalizing sign that Valve is no longer toying with ideas for the next-gen Steam Deck and is actively testing potential hardware.
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