Steam OS could be optimised for AMD Ryzen 7 6800U handheld consoles

GPD has teased some exciting information about future cooperation with Valve. Writing in the comments of its Win Max 2 Indiegogo campaign, GPD claimed that Valve reached out in March to discuss integrating the former's devices with Steam OS. Supposedly, Valve hopes to optimise Steam OS for the Ryzen 7 6800U, currently AMD's most powerful laptop APU. For reference, the Ryzen 7 6800U is the only 28 W APU that features the Radeon 680M, an iGPU with 12 Compute Units (CUs) based on AMD's RDNA 2 architecture.

According to GPD, Valve will even promote GPD's products on the Steam website, which would be quite the coup for GPD. While GPD adds that it plans to accept Valve's proposals, the process of optimising Steam OS for the Ryzen 7 6800U could take six months or more. In other words, do not expect GPD or Valve to share a Steam OS image for the likes of the Win Max 2 until 2023 at the earliest. Presumably, the work that Valve puts into getting Steam OS singing with the Ryzen 7 6800U will cut development time for optimising future AMD APUs, whenever they arrive.

Hopefully, Steam OS will pick up other Ryzen 7 6800U-powered machines too, such as those produced by AYA NEO, AYN or AOKZOE, for example. In the meantime, the Ryzen 7 6800U is already proving popular with gamers. Despite having over a month left on their crowdfunding campaigns, both the AOKZOE A1 and GPD Win Max 2 have smashed through their funding goals on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, respectively. In short, there will be many people who could benefit from Steam OS optimisation, not just Win Max 2 owners.

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