In the past two years, the magical graphics card market has allowed many gamers to move from the desktop to console platforms such as PlaySation5 and XBOX Series X/S. In addition, the handheld has also gained unprecedented development opportunities.
Affected by the supply chain, the original plan to release Steam Deck in 2021 has been repeatedly postponed, the current news is released on February 25, 2022, the official has also unblocked the initial opening of the box, graphics, video, but there are still players who get the host to disassemble it.
Although disassembling the host is contrary to the cooperation agreement, it can also give the outside world a better understanding of the internal design of the official version of Steam Deck, especially the APU processor customized by Steam to AMD.
Steam Deck's custom AMD APU belongs to the Van Gogh family, custom code name Aerith (Iris), using TSMC 7nm process manufacturing. CPU part Zen2 architecture, 4 cores 8 threads, clock frequency 3.5GHz; The core display is AMD's latest RDNA2 architecture, with 8 sets of CU units, a total of 512 stream processors, and a clock frequency of 1.6GHz. In terms of storage, the host comes standard with 16GB LPDDR5 5500MHz memory, providing 64GB, 256GB and 512GB three solutions, priced at $399, $529 and $649, respectively.
It can also be seen that the Steam Deck main chip is printed with the LOGO of "VALVE" and the words "Powered by AMD", and the meaning of customization is very obvious. The core adopts a single heat pipe and a single fan heat dissipation scheme. Not only that, the compact layout and tight fit inside the handheld are not recommended for ordinary players to disassemble themselves.
Editor's comments: AMD is very strong in the semi-development field, customers include Sony, Microsoft and other industry giants, bringing them good performance CPU and GPU chips. Steam Deck customizes this chip from AMD, although it is currently impossible to throw points, but from the Zen2 core and RDNA2 graphics card alone, it can be seen that driving 1280 *800 has no problem at all.