

To get a better sense of how the Steam Deck will perform, we have to look at the other specs, too. That is a general marker of this chip's compute performance, but again isn't entirely comparable with older or competing GPU generations. This RDNA 2 GPU will run at 1–1.6GHz and deliver up to 1.6 TFlops FP32 performance. However, such a slim number really won't make for a great experience in any ray-traced game. The RDNA 2 architecture means each of these CUs will be accompanied by an RT Core, which will nominally allow for ray tracing acceleration.

This is formed by eight RDNA 2 Compute Units (CUs), making for 512 cores in total. Then there's the GPU component the main driver for the gaming experience on the handheld. That's likely a move to keep this chip within a fairly restrictive power envelope, thus extending battery life and minimising thermal demand-the whole AMD APU in the Steam Deck requires just 4-15W of power. That's roughly equivalent to the Ry(opens in new tab) CPU (a $99 budget desktop CPU), although the Steam Deck CPU runs a touch slower at 2.4-3.5GHz. The Steam Deck features a four-core/eight-thread Zen 2 CPU.
