Steam Hardware

I don’t think it’s actually true that in low spec ranges AMD and Intel are competitive. The Apple a19 pro chip has a tdp of 8w while a Z1 extreme from amd has a 15w envelop that goes up to 30w. The A19 crushes the Z1 in single core and is 90idh percent on multi core. The fp32 performance is double the z1 as some indication of gpu horsepower. So let’s just say near the same performance at less than half the tdp. Or another way, same steam deck performance you’ve had (well better actually, steam deck doesn’t have a z1 extreme) at twice the battery life. The A19 Pro is also in a passively cooled device where a Z1 Extreme is actively cooled. Data sources for this: just looking at geekbench and pass mark scores that I could find. Of course there’s instruction translation overhead, and it’s not as clear cut as this (for one, Valve is not likely to poach chip designers from Apple and they seem reticent to create their own hardware), but still a thought worth considering.

Ultimately I don’t care if it’s arm based, I care about the performance of the machine itself (in totality, which the steam deck excels at even still).

So I guess in a long winded way, I’m agreeing with you that they should maximize the performance up to 15w (I would have said 30w for docked access but the steam machine seems to be their goal for the living room). I guess I am just not super convinced legacy chipmakers have what it takes to be competitive, even with a FEX penalty. I think we won’t see a steam deck 2 for another 2 years, and that’s a long time for FEX to mature, drivers to mature, and Valve to line up a low power, extremely strong device.