Interesting that it uses a dedicated 9070 (ugh that name), rather than being a custom APU, like the other AMD consoles and the deck. That just adds cost and design complexity. You’ve got to package multiple chips, have separate power circuitry for both, have separate memory pools, and a more complex cooling system.
That said, perhaps they’re being cautious - if you can’t sell a lot of them, a custom APU isn’t worth it. It’s also probably much faster to bring to market if you’re using off-the-shelf parts.
E: the source appears to only say Valve is working on 9070 drivers, therefore a steam machine must use a 9070. That’s a bit of a logic jump. For starters, any driver work on the 9070 will improve any other RDNA4 chips (including APUs). Also, Valve has done driver work on plenty of things that they don’t use in their own hardware, from various AMD cards, Intel graphics, and even work on the open source Nvidia drivers - they are gearing up to a general release of SteamOS, after all.
If you want to sell a Steam console, it has to do 4k pretty well, because that’s what TVs have these days. An APU won’t cut it for that, you’ll need a discrete GPU.
But not as powerful as the average gaming PC. If you take a mini ITX board, an every level Ryzen processor and something like an RX 7700 that would make a pretty cool system. If you manage to sell that for under $600, you have a winner.
A PS5 Pro is far more powerful than the average gaming PC.
And I don’t know why you think an APU can’t achieve good performance. The PS5 Pro manages it despite being a small die size and an old CPU architecture.
You talk of the need to make it manufacturable cheaply - that’s what APUs are good at. Having it across several chips that need more expensive board layouts, far more memory, and more advanced cooling adds cost.
Interesting that it uses a dedicated 9070 (ugh that name), rather than being a custom APU, like the other AMD consoles and the deck. That just adds cost and design complexity. You’ve got to package multiple chips, have separate power circuitry for both, have separate memory pools, and a more complex cooling system.
That said, perhaps they’re being cautious - if you can’t sell a lot of them, a custom APU isn’t worth it. It’s also probably much faster to bring to market if you’re using off-the-shelf parts.
E: the source appears to only say Valve is working on 9070 drivers, therefore a steam machine must use a 9070. That’s a bit of a logic jump. For starters, any driver work on the 9070 will improve any other RDNA4 chips (including APUs). Also, Valve has done driver work on plenty of things that they don’t use in their own hardware, from various AMD cards, Intel graphics, and even work on the open source Nvidia drivers - they are gearing up to a general release of SteamOS, after all.
TL;DR: this rumour is almost certainly bullshit.
If you want to sell a Steam console, it has to do 4k pretty well, because that’s what TVs have these days. An APU won’t cut it for that, you’ll need a discrete GPU.
Not a laptop-class one, no. That’s why I said custom. A PS5 Pro uses an APU and is more powerful than most people’s desktops.
But not as powerful as the average gaming PC. If you take a mini ITX board, an every level Ryzen processor and something like an RX 7700 that would make a pretty cool system. If you manage to sell that for under $600, you have a winner.
A PS5 Pro is far more powerful than the average gaming PC.
And I don’t know why you think an APU can’t achieve good performance. The PS5 Pro manages it despite being a small die size and an old CPU architecture.
You talk of the need to make it manufacturable cheaply - that’s what APUs are good at. Having it across several chips that need more expensive board layouts, far more memory, and more advanced cooling adds cost.