{"id":790340,"date":"2026-10-03T04:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T04:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/790340\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T04:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T04:38:12","slug":"steam-deck-2-rumours-heat-up-as-amd-gainsborough-apu-breaks-cover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/790340\/","title":{"rendered":"Steam Deck 2 Rumours Heat Up As AMD Gainsborough APU Breaks Cover"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AMD<\/a> Image: Digital Foundry<\/p>\n

Rumours broke this week about AMD’s next-gen handheld silicon, with some publications pinning the semi-custom “Gainsborough” APU to Valve’s long-anticipated Steam Deck 2. However, based on what we think we know about the new chipset, it’s too early to say definitively that the new chip is headed to a next-gen Valve handheld – even if some details do line up.<\/p>\n

In short, the Gainsborough chip appears to be a customised version of the mooted Z3 and Z3 Extreme silicon from AMD, with leakers suggesting the most likely CPU configuration is a six-core design, matching four Zen 6 cores with two low power Zen 6c cores. The GPU side of the equation is reportedly a 12CU design using RDNA 4m, an architecture that adds some RDNA 4 machine learning silicon to an RDNA 3 backbone – more akin to RDNA 3.5 than full-fat RDNA 4. The entire package is built on TSMC’s N3P process, with 15W and 25W power envelopes mooted.<\/p>\n

The specs are some way from being final, but import records surfaced by Chinese technology portal IT Home<\/a> suggest that the chips are being shipped, at least in small numbers – while the most recent AMD Adrenaline graphics driver also mentions the codename in its internal database. (ATLite3, rumoured by KeplerL2<\/a> to be the GPU codename for the PS6 chipset, is also mentioned.)<\/p>\n

The excitement here is that Gainsborough is the the last name of Final Fantasy 7’s Aerith – and Valve used the Aerith chip for the original Steam Deck, which was also a semi-custom design. The Steam Deck OLED, meanwhile, was powered by a chip codenamed Sephiroth. However, Sean Hollister at The Verge accurately points out<\/a> that AMD, not Valve itself, was responsible for this naming convention, and indeed “Aerith Plus” was the codename of the Z2 A chip eventually used by the Xbox Ally – completely unrelated to Valve’s efforts.<\/p>\n

Hollister also highlights the chip’s dimensions. At 25x25mm, Gainsborough is notably larger than the silicon housed inside both the original LCD Steam Deck and the Steam Deck OLED. A larger chip package wouldn’t be impossible to include, but would necessitate a more radical internal redesign.<\/p>\n

Perhaps more critically, Valve representatives have stated on many occasions that they’re not looking to push out a Steam Deck 2 as soon as they can. Instead, they want the device to offer a genuine generational leap, and in conversations with IGN<\/a>, stated that even “50 percent more performance at the same battery life” wouldn’t be enough of a gain to justify a new model.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, it’s too early to definitively say that the mooted Gainsborough chip would do enough to satisfy Valve’s high standards for Steam Deck 2 – even if the new model wouldn’t arrive until late 2027 or early 2028, around the same rough launch window as next-gen PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Still, using the same basic silicon as the PlayStation 6 handheld would make sense for Steam Deck 2, and it’ll be fascinating to see if more substantial evidence one way or another is unearthed as we hurtle towards next-gen.<\/p>\n

\"William<\/p>\n

Will is website editor for Digital Foundry, specialising in PC hardware, sim racing and display technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image: Digital Foundry Rumours broke this week about AMD’s next-gen handheld silicon, with some publications pinning the semi-custom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10560,59,873,50,1180,6149,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-790340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-amd","tag-gb","tag-hardware","tag-news","tag-pc","tag-steam-deck","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}