Valve comments on rumours of AMD RDNA 4 and SteamOS gaming project

It is no secret that Valve has been helping improve the state of AMD Mesa drivers on Linux. Nonetheless, reports earlier this week interpreted recent driver updates as a sign that Valve could be working on an Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 (curr. $449 on Amazon) alternative.

As we discussed at the time, these rumours appeared to be barking up the wrong tree about Valve's intentions behind preparing Linux drivers for AMD's RDNA 4 architecture. While Valve partnered with AMD to deliver the Steam Deck, Pierre-Loup Griffais, a senior Steam Deck developer, has offered the following clarification about RDNA 4 driver improvements of late:

...we've [Valve] done pre-release Mesa Vulkan work on every AMD architecture since Vega thanks to them kindly providing hardware, so there's nothing meaningful to read into there.

In other words, rumours of AMD RDNA 4-powered hardware can be filed in the same category as last month's claim that AMD had confirmed a Ryzen Z2 refresh of the Steam Deck. At this stage, there is no definitive evidence of new Valve hardware running SteamOS. Instead, there have been hints of a device codenamed 'Fremont', plus images of possible Deckard controller and Steam Controller 2 designs.