The Steam Deck handheld has been a major success for Valve with millions of gamers playing major releases on the new machine. However, Valve’s SteamOS plans aren’t just for portable players with a rumoured home console also in the works.
Following countless rumours and reports, it seems that Valve’s ‘Fremont’ console has been found hiding in recent Geekbench CPU results. Running AMD hardware, as expected, the new machine doesn’t give us any hint at a potential Steam Deck 2.
Via Twitter user SadlyItsDadley, Valve’s Fremont home console was discovered on Geekbench running Windows 11 Pro instead of SteamOS. The benchmark also mentions Valve Galileo, which isn’t a new SKU, but instead the codename for the Steam Deck OLED.
The new machine runs an “AMD Custom” CPU codenammed Hawk Point 2 which boasts six cores with 12 threads and runs at a clock speed of 3.2 GHz. While AMD is currently focused on its new Strix Point hardware, the Hawk Point 2 would be a revised version of the company’s last-gen laptop APU.
According to some sources, the Valve SteamOS console will use a custom version of this last-gen hardware with the integrated graphics processor removed. Instead of the integrated graphics, Valve is reportedly opting to use a discrete Radeon RX 7600 in its place.
According to the user, the Valve Fremont console is a “TV focused PC box/console running SteamOS”. While the hardware it’s using may be outdated in comparison to a PC, the mainstream machine is aiming to be affordably prices as a living room gaming PC.
Additionally, these specs do place the console above the specs of a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. However, with the next-gen Xbox reportedly also attempting to become more of a living room PC as opposed to a traditional console, will Valve’s machine already be outdated by the time it launches.
As for the Steam Deck, Microsoft is also attempting to encroach on Valve’s territory with the ASUS Xbox Ally and its X counterpart adopting an “advanced shader delivery” system similarly to the Deck’s approach.
