- Valve’s new gaming Steam Machine is slated to launch in spring 2026, but pricing hasn’t been announced yet
- The specs highlight major differences between the new system and Steam Deck
- The Steam Machine’s processor and its specs suggest it can challenge the current generation of consoles
It’s been literally years since rumors began about Valve’s plans for new hardware after Steam Deck’s launch in 2022, when whispers grew of a system that acts as a hybrid gaming PC and console setup. And now we finally have our answer: the new Steam Machine scheduled for launch in Spring 2026. One of the main questions, however, is how does this compare to the Steam Deck?
According to the spec sheet, the Steam Machine (not to be confused with the discontinued series that started in 2014) is “over six times more powerful than the Steam Deck,” thanks to a new processor and GPU capable of delivering performance that’s set to exceed anything the handheld can deliver.
Essentially, the Steam Machine isn’t a handheld, so while a comparison between the two systems might not seem natural, it’s the first system to follow the Steam Deck OLED while running SteamOS, and one that could potentially indicate what’s ahead for a handheld successor in the future.
It is worth noting that the specifications may well change ahead of its eventual launch. But for now, let’s discuss the main differences between the Steam Deck and the new Steam Machine…
1. Steam Machine has a significantly stronger CPU and GPU
The Steam Deck LCD and Steam Deck OLED have never been considered powerful handheld gaming devices, but have managed to stay in the charts of the best handheld consoles – where some might even say they are the best, thanks to their affordability and ease of use.
Valve isn’t kidding when it says the Steam Machine is over six times stronger than the Steam Deck; both LCD and OLED models use a Zen 2 4-core CPU and RDNA 2 GPU with only eight compute units (CPU and GPU are combined on the APU).
With the Steam Machine, Valve is aiming for much more power by using an AMD 6-core Zen 4 CPU and a ‘semi-custom’ AMD RDNA 3 GPU with 28 compute units. Not only is there a big step up in architecture from Zen 2 to Zen 4, resulting in faster clock speeds, but the Steam Machine has 20 more compute units, closer to what can be found in the PS5 (36 compute units) or even a low-end Nvidia RTX GPU.
While these specs aren’t quite there, it’s enough to put the Steam Machine and Steam Deck far apart in terms of power and performance, which you’d expect for a PC built for desktop and couch setups.
2. Steam Machine has ray tracing support and 4K gaming at 60 fps
While the Steam Deck can play some games with ray tracing settings enabled (or at a 4K resolution while maintaining decent frame rates), there aren’t many games where that would be possible without running into single digit frame rates or having to use aggressive upscaling.
The Steam Machine looks set to change that, with its spec sheet explicitly mentioning ray-tracing support and 4K gaming at 60fps using AMD’s FSR upscaling method.
For now, this should be FSR 3, as AMD has yet to backport FSR 4 to RDNA 3 hardware, but that may change when Steam Machine launches (especially since FSR 4’s source code was accidentally leaked).
With ray-tracing and 4K gaming at the fore, this once again places it well beyond the Steam Deck’s reach.
3. Steam Machine has more RAM for system and games
While the Steam Deck has 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, the maximum that can be used for the games (or more specifically, the GPU) is 4GB.
With the Steam Machine, the specs indicate that 16GB of DDR5 RAM will be available as general system RAM, while 8GB of GDDR6 appears to be set as the RAM allocated for games.
This should generally improve performance along with the upgraded processor and GPU, giving it more room for sustained frame rates by reducing stuttering issues – and that’s what helps the Steam Deck when it’s boosted to 4GB from its 1GB default.
4. The Steam Machine’s connectivity highlights a hybrid PC and home console
If it wasn’t already clear enough, the Steam Machine is a departure from the handheld nature of the Steam Deck, where a couch or desktop gaming setup is the way to go. The Steam Deck could be docked and used on a gaming monitor or TV, but it came with the handicap of losing performance at resolutions higher than 800p.
With the Steam Machine, Valve have clearly designed this to be a designated home console that can be used on either a gaming monitor or TV, with two display output ports via DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0, and others such as 4x USB-A ports and 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port.
There’s no sign of HDMI 2.1, but HDMI 2.0 (with chroma subsampling) still allows for 4K 120Hz gaming. DisplayPort 1.4 also supports 4K 240Hz, a huge boost for all gamers on display setups.
There’s still plenty more information to come, as there’s no word on pricing yet, and the question remains whether Valve’s new gaming system will copy Steam Deck’s affordable pricing template.
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