Following the success of Steam Deck, many (including myself) eagerly wait to see how Valve will iterate on the handheld. The company remains transparent about plans to produce a successor, but hasn’t shared specifics bout the system bar denying it will feature a Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU. Turns out, we should expect a custom SoC instead.
On the Geekbench 6 CPU database, there are now two entries for ‘Valve Fremont’. From these results, we know the SoC stems from AMD’s ‘Hawk Point 2’ family, which makes the chip closely related to the Ryzen 8000 and 200 Series mobile chips.
Valve is adopting more-modern architectures with Fremont, namely Zen 4 and RDNA 3. For context, Steam Deck’s ‘Aerith’ and ‘Sephiroth’ APUs use Zen 2 and RDNA 2. Curiously, this newer SoC features two fewer cores than the older ones (6 vs. 8) but architectural improvements will help plug this gap.
Analysing the entries further, other curiosities come to light such as the use of Windows 11 Pro. Valve will undoubtedly continue to use SteamOS for future devices, and I can only imagine using Microsoft’s operating system is part of some QA process. Additionally, Fremont only has 8GB of RAM available which likely isn’t reflective of final configuration.
It’s for the reasons above that I’ve not prioritised discussing CPU scores, but averaging the two results leaves Fremont with 2,358 single-core points and 7,284 multi-core. Such performance will change with more RAM and while running SteamOS.
Storied Valve leaker SadlyItsBradley, provided further insight into Fremont in an X post. They claim the APU will go inside a “PC box/console running SteamOS” and will replace integrated graphics with a dedicated RX 7600 which won’t share RAM with the SoC. We should also expect a custom Valve motherboard and case to emerge in the future.
Valve Fremont recap: a TV focused PC box/console running SteamOS. Has dedicated HDMI port
Has a semi-custom CPU based on Hawk Point 2. But with a removed iGPU
Has custom Valve mobo/case. And dedicated RX 7600 GPU (No shared RAM)
Geekbench is from Taiwan (Quanta factory debug) https://t.co/IdQvrWELo3 pic.twitter.com/Iywej8EClj
— SadlyItsDadley (@SadlyItsBradley) August 20, 2025
SadlyItsBradley highlights that this Fremont box should also arrive with ‘Ibex’ gamepad and ‘Roy’ controllers. These are new peripherals from Valve which have materialised in prior leaks, with the latter proving the most interesting as they should debut alongside the long-rumoured Deckard VR headset.
It’s difficult to say when Fremont will hit the market, but Valve is clearly making progress with plans to launch new hardware. I’d perhaps expect to see something more concrete emerge next year, but that’s just my best guess.
Based on the specifications above, this design isn’t massively appealing to me on paper. I’m far more interested in how Valve plans to push the handheld and virtual reality spaces forward than I am to see it enter the prebuilt PC/console market. However, if there’s one company that’s capable of surprising me, it’s this one.
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