The Steam Deck has been without a doubt one of the surprises of this year, since nobody expected that Valve would re-launch a complete computer after the commercial fiasco that was the Steam Machines. The system created jointly between Gabe Newell’s company and AMD has proven to be able to bring PC gaming to an almost pocket-sized platform. However, how feasible is it? a Steam Deck in the style of a traditional console? Could it compete against the Xbox Series and PS5? What differential points would you have with your supposed competition?
Actually using PC parts we can have our own Steam Deck, although for compatibility issues it is preferable to use parts with the same architecture. That is, AMD Ryzen 3000 processors onwards, with Zen 2 architecture or higher together with RX 6000 graphics cards or, alternatively, a laptop with Ryzen 6000. The only thing you need to have installed as an operating system is HoloISO, which is nothing more than the version of SteamOS 3.0 used by the Steam Deck. However, what we will talk about in this article is what could be a version only to connect to the TV.
Is a traditional console-style Steam Deck possible?
Well, the answer is yes, since it uses the same technology as PS5 and the Xbox Series. That is, a CPU with Zen 2 architecture and a GPU with RDNA 2 architecture, both from AMD and sharing space on the same chip. So the technology has already been tested. In any case, let’s not forget that the Steam Deck already has a Dock accessory that allows us to use the system on a monitor or a television, so it can also be used as a desktop console.
The problem with it? We are limited by the fact that it is originally a portable system. So we’re talking about having a more powerful desktop system, to the point where it can display 4K graphics at 60 frames per second like the current generation of systems.
What specifications would the Steam Dock have?
Taking into account the previous experience with SONY and Microsoft, it is clear that for AMD there would be no problem in creating an exclusive chip for a Steam Deck as a traditional console, which could also load all the games from the Valve console catalog, which it has now reached 5,000 fully supported PC titles. Knowing the experience of Lisa Su’s company in manufacturing custom designs for its partners for almost 10 years now, there is no doubt that they could make a Steam Deck that could compete against PS5 and Xbox Series X on a technical level, or At least get as close as possible.
What specifications could have what would become a potential Steam Dock?
- Since Valve is dedicated to the distribution of games through the Internet and not in physical format, the system would not carry any type of Blu Ray or DVD drive.
- As in the Steam Deck, the storage would be made with 2230-size NVMe SSDs, the same ones used by Valve for the current console.
- Few games on PC use 6 cores and even fewer use 4. However, being able to allocate one or two cores to the Proton interpreter would improve gaming performance. So an 8 core CPU would be fine. Incidentally, AMD and Valve could use TSMC’s 6nm technology, already used in the Ryzen 6000, where they have already ported their RDNA 2 graphics.
- And speaking of the Ryzen 6000, the processor could be a Zen 3+, which is fully compatible.
- RAM memory would continue to be 16 GB, but this time GDDR6 instead of LPDDR5, which means a 256-bit bus. So we could be talking about a bandwidth of 448 GB/s or 512 GB/s depending on the speed of the memory.
- The unknown would be the integrated graphics, since depending on its size the cost of the console will be higher or lower and it would influence the number of consoles
Although economically unfeasible
However, we must start from the fact that with the current cost of manufacturing chips from Valve, they should ensure a large enough volume in terms of the number of wafers. And here we enter the reason why Steam Deck is a portable console, since in order to reach a certain volume of sales they have had to consider it as a portable console.
That is, it would be technically possible, but the economics would make it impossible. Let’s not forget that the fact that we can use our Steam library is what prevents them from reselling the games for their platform. So they can not use the business of selling the console at cost and recover the money with the royalties of the games. Microsoft and SONY can do it, what’s more, Valve cannot afford to make a Game Pass because that would devalue the store. Nor can they implement an online payment to finance themselves due to the fact that this is not common on PCs.
