In brief: AMD and Valve are working on an improved Linux CPU driver that improves the frequency scaling on Zen 2 processors. This should lend more credibility to Valve's claim that the Steam Deck tin attain at least 30 frames per second in all modern games.

When Valve announced the Steam Deck last month, it brought a lot of excitement amidst gamers who had been waiting for a way to play their favorite games from their Steam library wherever they want, without having to lug effectually a proper gaming laptop. Even Epic CEO Tim Sweeney thinks information technology'due south a groovy idea, but equally always execution is what will ultimately determine whether or non it will become a success.

There's been a lot of speculation equally to how well the console will perform, and the specs are quite impressive because the size, at to the lowest degree on paper. Valve says the custom AMD APU paired with sixteen GB of LPDDR5 memory is capable of at least 30 frames per second in pretty much whatsoever recent AAA game, but the company hasn't go into greater detail.

We can only presume the Steam Deck's RDNA 2 GPU is probably skilful enough to run games at low-medium settings on the 800p display (peculiarly with the aid of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution in games that support it), simply the operation targeted by Valve may too exist the outcome of additional software optimization piece of work.

According to a Phoronix report, Valve has partnered with AMD to develop a ameliorate Linux commuter for the Zen 2 CPU in the new console that should solve CPU functioning scaling issues, among other things.

The main reason for this evolution endeavor is that the electric current ACPI CPUFreq commuter is "not very functioning/power efficiency [efficient] for mod AMD platforms."

In other words, the new commuter will allow the processor in the Steam Deck to quickly ramp up to a college operation state when needed and achieve better performance per watt. This is important equally the ability budget for both the CPU and the GPU is relatively limited at 15W.

Nosotros'll know more about AMD's new Linux CPU commuter in September, as the company is expected to share more than details at the X.org Developer Conference (XDC).