The funding campaign GPD Win 4 It has already been published on Indiegogo with the purpose of putting it into operation at the end of this month of November 2022. Apart from that, we find the confirmation of the change in processor technology, going from the Intel Tiger Lake used by the third generation to the mentioned AMD Ryzen 7 6800U CPU with integrated Radeon 680M graphics and based on the RDNA 2 architecture.
Switching from Intel to a Ryzen APU makes a lot of sense considering that AMD has more powerful and advanced integrated graphics accelerators than Intel. The jump to the RDNA 2 architecture is another aspect to take into account, since according to what the company has published in the Indiegogo campaign to finance the GPD Win 4, “compared to the RDNA 1 architecture, it offers an increase of 30% in frequency with the same level of power consumption, resulting in an increase in performance per watt of up to 54%.” The Radeon 680M graphics accelerator features in the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U CPU with 12 compute units and 768 shader.
The commitment to AMD technology could sound like a slipstream movement of what Valve did with the Steam Deck, and it seems to be so if we see that the Indiegogo campaign indicates that the GPD Win 4 will be able to support dual boot with Windows 11 and SteamOS, also with adaptability supplied by Valve itself. At the end of the day, Gabe Newell’s company is interested in consolidating its own ecosystem through Steam.
Continuing with more features of the mini-PC, it has a 6 inch screen protected with Gorilla Glass 5, with native wide mode and that works with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and resolutions of 1920×1080 pixels and 1280×720 pixels, plus refresh rates of 40 and 60 hertz.
At the memory level it will be possible to buy the GPD Win 4 with 16 or 32 gigabytes of LPDDR5 RAM at 6,400MHz and for data storage will be made available 1 or 2 terabytes in M.2 form factor next to microSD slot capable of supporting cards up to 2TB.
As soon as it will incorporate a USB 4.0 at 40Gbps, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C at 10Gbps, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A at 10Gbps and a 3.5mm jack for audio. For its part, the dock will additionally make available an HDMI 2.0, three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A at 10Gbps, an RJ45 connector for Gigabit Ethernet and a USB 3.2 Type-C that will only do the function of charging the battery. At the wireless level we find Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 and the possibility of adding 4G LTE as an option.
The lithium polymer battery promises to offer two hours of autonomy with heavy use, three to six hours with moderate use and up to ten with light use. Needless to say, it is convenient to use a low resolution, set the frame rate to 45fps and the graphic quality to a minimum if you want to have some autonomy with a device with these characteristics.
The dimensions of the GPD Win 4 are 220 x 92 x 28 millimeters and its weight is 570 grams. Compared to the Steam Deck, it stands out for being smaller and making available a physical keyboard that is located under the screen, but it will be necessary to see if that does not translate into higher temperatures and a weaker device, because in the end accounts is still a relatively powerful x86 PC packed into little space and has more gadgets. In general, in these areas, greater complexity leads to greater chances of rupture.
