Valve Steam Deck 2: Reliable leaker alleges iGPU woefully inadequate for AAA games

Serial leaker Moore’s Law Is Dead recently shared some interesting details about the “Gainborough” AMD APU that could power the Valve Steam Deck 2. However, if you were hoping for the Gainsborough APU to be considerably more powerful than the original Steam Deck APU, you might be disappointed. According to Kepler_L2, the AMD Gainsborough APU uses an aging graphics architecture.

Replying to a comment on X, Kepler-L2 claims that the Gainsborough APU is RDNA 3.5+ or RDNA 4m. RDNA 3.5 GPU architecture is a minor refresh of the AMD RDNA 3 that first debuted back in 2022. So, the RDNA 3.5+, which looks like a minor refresh of RDNA 3.5, would essentially be over five years old by the time the Steam Deck 2 comes out.

Furthermore, the AMD Gainsborough APU that will potentially power the Steam Deck 2 might only have a small 12 Compute Unit iGPU. While a 12 CU RDNA 3.5+ iGPU is still much better than the Steam Deck’s 8 CU RDNA 2 iGPU, it is by no means a powerhouse. This is especially true if we assume the Steam Deck 2’s APU will operate at 4-15 W TDP, like the first-gen Steam Deck (get one on Amazon).

Interestingly, we can already get a rough performance idea of a 12 CU RDNA 3.5+ iGPU by looking at the performance of the Radeon 880M, an RDNA 3.5 iGPU with 12 CUs. Our testing shows that, while the Radeon 880M is sufficiently powerful to play lighter titles like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, modern AAA games humble the iGPU quite easily.

So, an RDNA 3.5+ iGPU with only 12 CUs and up to 15 W would inevitably make the Steam Deck 2 quite underpowered compared to something like the Sony PS6 handheld. Even the current crop of Intel-based handheld gaming consoles like the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ with the Intel Arc G3 Extreme will likely be much more powerful than the Steam Deck 2.

As always, such early leaks should always be taken with a grain of salt. So, only time will tell what APU the Valve Steam Deck 2 actually employs and how powerful it is the handheld console ends up being.