One thing to sit up for: Considered one of Steam Deck’s most important benefits is Valve’s optimization of Steam OS. Because of these tweaks, the working system might find yourself on one other, extra highly effective handheld gaming PC, and Valve could assist different producers foster this rising tier of portables.
The maker of the just lately revealed GPD Win Max 2 says Valve reached out to it about bringing the Steam Deck’s working system to the upcoming gadget. Collaboration might assist flip it right into a extra interesting premium various to Valve’s handheld gaming PC.
Valve’s Steam OS is a free Linux distro that the corporate encourages customers to put in on varied gadgets, probably even the Win Max 2. Nevertheless, Valve has launched optimizations to the Steam Deck software program to enhance that particular {hardware}’s gaming efficiency and provides customers extra management. Gamers can obtain pre-cached recreation shaders and simply alter refresh charges or clock speeds to preserve battery life.
These changes would possibly scale up comparatively easily on the Win Max 2. The AMD variations of the mini laptop computer run on chips from the identical household as these within the Steam Deck however are extra highly effective. Valve’s gadget sports activities a customized 4-core, 8-thread Zen 2 processor working at as much as 3.5GHz, and a 1.6GHz GPU with 8 RDNA 2 compute models.
Win Max 2 ought to exceed these specs with the 4.7GHz 8-core, 16-thread Zen 3+ Ryzen 7 6800U and a 2.2GHz GPU with 12 RDNA 2 compute models. Although, it should price about twice as a lot as a Steam Deck.
At present, GDP plans to ship the Win Max 2 with Home windows. A tailor-made Steam OS choice would encourage comparisons between native recreation efficiency on Home windows versus Steam OS’s compatibility layer Proton.
Nevertheless, GPD says it could first must ship Valve its gadget for testing, after which it might take six months to get an optimized Steam OS on the system. Afterward, Valve would possibly promote GPD’s handheld PCs on Steam, much like the way it showcases HP, HTC, and Microsoft VR headsets alongside its personal. The sort of partnership might open the door for extra handheld PCs sooner or later.