In a completely unexpected development, Valve is launching a Steam Deck console with a larger OLED display, a more efficient system-on-chip, a more capable memory subsystem, 1 TB of storage options, and faster Wi-Fi. We have released an improved version of. -Fi 6E, and large capacity battery. The performance goals for portable gaming devices are the same, but with faster memory, the new unit may be faster than the original. Meanwhile, the cheapest 256GB version of the console with an LCD screen currently costs $399.
The main difference between the new Steam Deck OLED and the original Steam Deck is the larger 7.4-inch OLED display. According to , the new screen maintains a 1280×720 resolution, but also supports HDR with a standard brightness of 600 nits (a significant improvement) and a maximum zone brightness of 1000 nits. tom’s hardware. The new monitor was also found to be able to cover 101.8% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. Our colleagues found that this was 48.5% for the original Steam deck. Despite the larger display, the console maintains its original size while being 29 grams lighter, as OLED does not require a backlight module or a display driver with all the appropriate circuitry.
Another big change from the original is that the Steam Deck OLED now uses AMD’s new semi-custom SoC with four Zen 2 x86 cores and 512 stream processors made with TSMC’s N6 process technology. It uses an RDNA 2-based GPU. The use of N6 makes the SoC slightly cheaper to manufacture and allows us to maintain the original 4W to 15W power envelope without having to change the GPU clock from 1.0 GHz to 1.60 GHz. This may have a slight positive effect on performance in certain games.
An interesting detail about the new unit is that it uses a 16 GB LPDDR5-6400 memory subsystem with a peak bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s, up from the original unit’s 88 GB/s bandwidth. We can only question whether the 16% memory bandwidth improvement will have a significant impact on game performance, but we feel it could provide an improvement in certain bandwidth-intensive scenarios. Alternatively, faster memory might be slightly more power efficient.
When it comes to power, it should be noted that the Steam Deck OLED comes with a 50 Wh battery, up from the 40 Wh battery of the original, so we expect the new battery to have a longer lifespan. The new console, on the other hand, comes with a longer 2.5 meter power cord.
Yet another notable improvement to the Steam Deck OLED is the top-of-the-line model’s 1 TB storage subsystem (the M.2-2230 drive is still replaceable). Meanwhile, to download games faster, the Steam Deck OLED comes with a Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6E adapter from the original model.
Valve is launching Steam Deck OLED to coincide with the holiday shopping system, not only increasing the overall appeal of the product but also making the platform more accessible. The older 64 GB eMMC model with LCD screen will be on sale for $349 while supplies last, while the 256 GB LCD version will now be $399 (down from $529). The new Steam Deck OLED 512 GB is priced at $449, while the Steam Deck OLED 1 TB has an MSRP of $649.
