There’s some wild rumors out this early that claim to know the specs of the Steam Deck 2.
As shared on Reddit by user LolcatP, these numbers come from a Chinese forum. Even LolcatP doesn’t 100 % trust this rumor, but as they have properly pointed out, it’s worth taking a few minutes to read it out, just in case some or all of it turns out to be true.
So here’s what the rumor from the Chinese forum says:
- 900p, 90Hz horizontal OLED
- AMD custom APU
- 6 core CPU with 16 compute unite GPU, possibly RDNA 4
- Zen 4
- 8533mhz RAM
- $ 600
- Q3 – Q4 2026
So we should point out, the immediate reason to be skeptical. Valve clearly must see how rapidly the PC gaming space has been growing. Companies like GPD, Ayaneo, but also the bigger companies, like Lenovo and MSI, making devices outfitted with the latest available chips.
Valve may have seen some merit to having a custom AMD APU made for the original Steam Deck, because AMD’s range of products at the time did not have the Z1 APU yet. In other words, they did not have a dedicated gaming CPU/APU while they were developing the device.
Thanks to Valve and their competitors, AMD has seen enough market interest to start making their gaming portable dedicated CPUs. Subsequently, the MSI Claw claims to have Intel’s first gaming dedicated CPU as well.
What this all adds up to is that Valve does not need to make a custom order for their CPU/APU, and it would likely harm them to do so in the future. Continuing to work with a custom CPU could mean that they separate themselves from trends in that market that other portable gaming devices will follow in the future. They would just end up left out.
Outside of that, there really isn’t much to ascertain on the veracity of this rumor. What would matter the most here would really be the availability of the components that Valve is targeting for their device. What one can imagine is that there is a big non-consumer facing market for these components, that we simply don’t know anything about. For example, screens used for gaming devices could also be in use in the medical or aerospace industry.
How prepared will Valve be for the release of their Steam Deck 2? We imagine they are managing their resources with what they have built up now, but there’s no telling if fans worldwide will have to wait a year to get one for themselves again.
If there’s anything tangible to look towards in the near future, it will be how Valve manages the release of their Steam Deck OLED.
