Conflicting reports emerge about new Valve Steam hardware with AMD RDNA 4 graphics
YouTuber eXtas1s claims to have shed new light on the state of what they believe to be Valve's next Steam console. According to eXtas1s, he and HandleDeck have observed links between AMD and Valve in recent Linux driver updates for the Radeon RX 9070 and other RDNA 4 desktop cards.
As a result, the pair have come to the conclusion that Valve could be developing a home console of sorts, possibly as an Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 Pro (curr. $699 on Amazon) competitor. It is worth stressing that neither has provided any evidence to verify their claims, despite the open-source nature of these drivers.
In other words, we would take any suggestions that Valve is developing a new Steam Machine with a healthy amount of scepticism for the time being. eXtas1s has somewhat of a mixed reputation when it comes to leaks of these kind too, having fallen short several times after accurately outlining last year's Xbox Games Showcase.
To that end, Liam Dawe from GamingOnLinux completely refutes all claims made by eXtas1s and HandleDeck. Writing on GamingonLinux, Dawe stresses that Valve has employed developers 'for years' to update AMD Mesa graphics drivers to ensure Linux compatibility for current and 'future AMD hardware'.
Consequently, Dawe believes that eXtas1s and GamingOnLinux have misinterpreted recent driver changes, possibly buoyed by prior rumours of the Valve 'Fremont' based on the so-called AMD Lilac platform. As evidence of Dawe's belief, a senior member of Valve's Linux graphics driver team remarked the following in documentation for a recent Mesa driver patch concerning AMD's RDNA 4 architecture:
This initial support should be good enough but it's missing two features (cooperative matrix and video decode/encode) compared to GFX11 (RDNA3) because lack of time.
DCC is still under active development but it might be possible to finish it during the RC period.
In short, this new rumour appears as valid as one about an AMD Ryzen Z2 refresh of the Steam Deck that VideoCardz circulated. For reference, Pierre-Loup Griffais, a well-known Steam Deck designer, publicly put down this rumour. While the state of new Steam hardware remains unknown for the time being, third-party hobbyists have managed to turn the Steam Deck into a home console of sorts.
Source(s)
eXtas1s (1) (2), GamingOnLinux & HandleDeck, Alexander Andrews & Unsplash - Image credits
