1d ago

Valve 'Fremont' APU breaks cover on Geekbench, most likely for a future console

www.club386.com

Valve 'Fremont' APU breaks cover on Geekbench, hinting at possible future console | Club386

New steam controller expected to release alongside it. This also should push back estimates of when to expect a Steam Deck 2, since valve is probably putting most of their hardware efforts towards this instead.

PC Gaming @lemmy.ca

alessandro @lemmy.ca

6h ago

Valve 'Fremont' APU breaks cover on Geekbench, hinting at possible future console | Club386

www.club386.com /valve-fremont-apu-breaks-cover-on-geekbench-hinting-at-possible-future-console/

32 comments

I really, really wouldn't trust this website. I found a glaring error in it, and then an even more glaring one in the article it links about the rumoured Valve standalone VR headset:
Curiously, this newer SoC features two fewer cores than the older ones (6 vs. 8) but architectural improvements will help plug this gap.
It’s not too surprising considering McVicker states it’ll run on an ARM-based CPU, much like Deck. With a lower power draw, this ought to keep battery life reasonable where a traditional x86 variant would drain it in minutes. The trade-off is that computational output isn’t quite on par with your usual desktop CPU, unless you’re talking about Apple’s M Series specifically.
I'm a simple man - I see AMD, I buy
As someone still using Steam Controller on the daily, I'm most excited about Steam Controller 2. The original remains the best controller I have ever used.
- I still have mine in it's original box sealed. It's my retirement plan.
It's possible this could be for their upcoming VR headset, which had some standalone features
Gabe please do mobile phone.
- What if.... Valve is the company GrapheneOS is trying to make a phone with.
  Holy shit that would be amazing.
  
  Dawg, sign me up - no cap.
  
  Okay but I want it to be like an Xperia Play, with a full-on controller built into it somehow!
Don't know about their next console, but I'd love that new Steam Controller. Hop to it Valve!
Ngl I would expect the steam deck 2 to use a arm64 cpu
- I didn't think Translation layers were nearly good enough for that, otherwise why wouldnt more people use macs for gaming?
  
  Look, I have a Mac, I like the ecosystem but have a handful of Linux machines (including my laptop) so I’m, ahem, not the average Mac user. You go in the App Store and enjoy whatever games are there. Or hear that on Steam they’re less expensive and go through that… then discover that there’s a boatload of Mac games that simply won’t work on your OS because they are 32 bit and Apple dropped support for that in 2019 (meaning that from 2019 no Mac, even Intel ones, can run those games). Then, there’s the Crossover option: a paid product that will allow you to install Steam for Windows and any game compatible with that platform. It’ll use GPTK for compatibility and it’s a big supporter of WINE, so a purchase helps open source…
  But: how likely do you think that an Apple user will go that far off the beaten path?
  
  You should check out some of Jeff Geerling's videos. He's gotten Portal 2 working on a RaspberryPi5 with an external AMD card through Box86. If Valve invested the same programming/engineering team into that project the way they have with WINE/Proton then it would likely end up just as polished. I super don't agree that they will switch to ARM though, AMD are working wonders with low-power gaming.
  
  In the case of Macs it's not an issue with the ARM architecture, but with Apple. Since they dropped support for some libraries a few years ago, new versions of wine (and proton) stopped working on Apple Silicon. That's the main and pretty much only reason why you can only play like 13 games on newer Macs.
  As for Linux, ARM support is still in its early stages. From my experience it's not even ready for regular daily use. Might depend on the device though. M1 Macbooks run pretty good with Asahi.
  
  Ig when the Steam Deck 2 releases it becomes fine?
  
  apple silicon has specific changes to amd64, and some extra instructions to help with x86 translation afaik (1 of the main things i think is how memory is laid out is different somehow? so every memory access needs extra clock cycles to accomplish in standard arm64)
  but in general, rosetta2 is incredible: very little performance loss… i thiiink it’s something like 2-10%, which is made up for by the cheaper cores
  from what i understand, graphics is more of a problem… metal just isn’t well supported - i think the standard thing is you have to do direct x <-> dxvk <-> vulkan <-> moltenvk <-> metal, which is a huge overhead and is far from perfect in its translations
  
  because of drivers, i use a radxa orion o6 with an amd gpu as my main desktop and it is actualy pretty good for gaming
Hmmm... Not a fan. Any new box should have at least ML upscaling, ML ray reconstruction, and support for cooperative vectors. RDNA3 is PS5-level tech. Hope Valve picks either RDNA4 or UDNA for the gpu of whatever comes next
- yeah as of now this looks like a pretty weak showing.
- I agree, but I would buy this for my kids instantly.

32 comments