A pair of Spanish-speaking YouTubers have spurred on more rumors surrounding a potential Valve Steam console, which the company is rumored to be making as a follow-up to its handheld, the Steam Deck. According to the rumors, the new device is set to use the same AMD RDNA 4 GPU architecture used in the new Radeon RX 9070, but it looks more like a misunderstanding to us.
Valve’s Steam Deck is the best PC gaming handheld right now, and for good reason. The easy usability of its Linux-based SteamOS on the handheld device sets it apart from the others that use Windows. Of course, as Valve is now actively involved with maintaining a Linux distribution, it only makes sense for the company to comment on Linux developments.
The rumor right now, as it stands, is that Valve is potentially working on a console based on a new AMD RDNA 4 graphics card. This rumor comes from a Linux-focused outlet, Phoronix. On January 29, the site wrote a story based on Valve’s lead Linux graphics driver developer, Samuel Pitoiset, adding a comment to a code depot.
Pitoiset said that the current driver for the upcoming AMD RDNA 4 hardware is “good enough” in its initial implementation, but is missing video-related features from the previous RDNA 3 architecture due to time constraints.
Both video hosts then took Pitoiset’s comments on RDNA 4 software to conclude that Valve must be working on new hardware. This has been spun as Valve looking to take on Sony and Microsoft in the console space.
However, what is more likely the case, is that Valve is ensuring that upcoming, modern GPUs work fine on SteamOS, or Linux in general. Valve has built Proton, a translation layer that allows Windows games to run almost natively on any version of Linux, and this needs to work with the latest GPUs.
As such, not only does Valve need to ensure that RNDA 4 GPUs run fine on its hardware and fork of Linux, but also through Proton. Translated by Wccftech, one of the leakers says in their video: “… from what my friend has heard, Valve is putting a lot of effort into the drivers for these RX 9070 GPUs with RDNA 4. And the question he raises in his tweet, which we all might be wondering, is why Valve is so interested in collaborating on this.”
A Redditor also pointed out that in the video they do say “we come to the conclusion” in the video. This is after reading a news article about how well the graphics drivers will work at launch.
Rumors do point to new Valve hardware being in the works, but this looks like it will be in the VR headset and PC controller space. While the architecture used in the new AMD Radeon RX 9070 might be included in a future Valve project, we don’t believe the rumors that are currently swirling to be anything more than trying to read between the lines. In the meantime, check out our guide to the best graphics card if you’re looking to buy a new GPU now.
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