Valve, could we please get a Ryzen 390-ish Steamdeck platform refresh? Or maybe if Intel wants game devs to test on their GPUs they'd cut a small deal to make an Intel Xe refresh.
My guess is that Valve will wait at least 1 more generation, since Zen 6 will be on N2p which will be the first nanosheet generation (with promised 30% power reductions compared to the n3e that zen5 uses). Valve clearly is more interested in a console model with new releases only when there is a massive performance uplift compared to the prior generation, so I think we are at least 1 gen away. Specifically, I think their target will be 1080p/60fps on low settings (or higher settings using fsr).
Hopefully 1920x1200 (staying 16:10), as this resolution has some very nice properties with integer scaling for compatibility with resolutions used by old games :
Maybe Zen 6. AMD already provides the Z-Series specifically for handhelds. The Steamdeck uses currently the regular Zen2 with a RNDA2 from Zen3+. Best would be passive cooling, which would probably run well with native Linux ports like Counter-Strike 2. But I'm worried that they need to use fans again.
Valve cares about battery life and user experience more than just raw power, and after watching multiple other handhelds deliver very insubstantial improvements over Steam Deck OLED at 3x power consumption, I tend to agree. I'm convinced that SD2 won't happen until measurable improvements at the same 15W power limit the current Deck has. There are plenty of older games and indies in Steam catalog that play perfectly fine on Deck, and chasing the latest power hungry UE5 juggernauts is a losing proposition.
One thing I wouldn't mind having on my Deck is FSR4 support, though AMD still hasn't submitted their Vulkan FP8 support proposal, requiring unofficial Mesa hacks to enable it even on desktop Linux.
