Valve Details Steam Deck’s “Aerith” SoC in New Video, Global FPS Limiter and AMD FSR Update in the Works

The Steam Deck, an upcoming PC-based game console announced by Valve back in May 2018, is now available for preorder. The system has been designed to be upgradable with AMD Radeon graphics cards and the forthcoming Intel “Aerith” SoC which will allow players to run games at 4K resolution. The company also detailed their plans for limiting global FPS rates during PUBG matches as well as offering a new update that will improve performance on all supported CPUs.,

The “steam deck fidelityfx” is a new SoC from Valve that will be used in their Steam Machines. In the video, they detail the features of the chip and what it will be used for. They also mention that they are working on a global FPS limiter and an update for AMD FSR in the works.

Image courtesy of Valve

Valve has published a copy of a recent live webcast that gives a lot of technical details about their next portable gaming device. The name of the SoC is one of them; Valve’s developers are reportedly Final Fantasy VII enthusiasts who named it after flower girl Aerith. They also stated that the Steam Deck would gain a global frame rate limitation to save power and increase battery life, as well as a future OS update that potentially allow AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution in games that don’t support it natively.

The Steam Deck’s efficiency, according to Valve:

What makes our CPU really unique is that it was built from the bottom up to maximize the 4- to 15-watt power envelope accessible in this form factor. […] The one key lesson I’d want to leave you with today is that the degree of performance per watt we were able to accomplish with this CPU would just not be attainable with any current off-the-shelf processor.

The advantages of utilizing LPDDR5 memory, according to Valve:

The Steam Deck will be one of the first devices to use LP5, and we chose LP5 for two main reasons. The first is memory bandwidth; our APU operates at 5.5 GHz with a 128-bit memory bus. This adds up to a total bandwidth of 88 gigabytes per second, which outperforms several dedicated desktop-grade GPUs per teraflop. The second benefit of LP5 is its power efficiency; it has a number of excellent power-saving features […]

Despite Valve’s failure to fulfill its initial launch date due to component shortages, reservations for the Steam Deck remain available. Current orders will not be sent until until the second quarter of 2022.

Valve is the source of this information.