There is no doubt that Valve is not afraid of the growing competition that has occurred in the sector of portable consoles based on Ryzen 6000 series APUs, rather the opposite is true, since the company led by Gabe Newell sees this concurrence of devices like a golden opportunity to extend the reach of Steam OSthe operating system used by the Steam Deck.
So much so that Valve has contacted GPD, creators of the Win Max 2 console, to propose the development of an optimized version of Steam OS that would work perfectly with the Ryzen 7 6800U APU that said console can mount, and that offers a really interesting performance thanks to its Zen 3+ configuration at the CPU level and RDNA2 at the GPU level.
The Ryzen 7 6800U APU is much more powerful than the APU that the Steam Deck mounts, since the first one has a CPU of 8 cores and 16 threads Zen 3+ and a Radeon 680M GPU with 768 shaders, while Valve’s console has a CPU Zen 2 with 4 cores and 8 threads and an RDNA2 GPU with 512 shaders.
In terms of raw power there is no doubt that the GPD Win Max 2 is clearly superior to the Steam Deck, but the latter plays with the advantage of having an operating system totally optimized and adapted to its possibilities, something that, as we have said, could change very soon, since Valve has offered to develop an adapted and optimized version of Steam OS for the Ryzen 7 6800U APU.
What can I say, I think it’s great that Valve sees an opportunity to push Steam OS by looking beyond the hardware when other companies saw nothing but a direct rivalan enemy, and you know how enemies are usually treated.
Offering an optimized version of Steam OS to GPD may seem like Valve is throwing stones at its own roof, but actually the opposite happens, because as we said it is promoting and favoring the standardization of said operating system. If Valve plays its cards right, others may show interest in Steam OS to power their new consoles, and in the end the market will end up creating a “dynamic duo” thanks to the union of Ryzen APUs and said operating system.
We will see how all this evolves, but the truth is that I think Valve’s approach is very successful, and I think that Steam OS could end up becoming reference operating system within its category.
