Igeekphone News, August 20th: Technology media WccfTech published a blog post yesterday (August 19th), reporting that Valve is developing a game device code-named Fremont, equipped with a custom AMD Hawk Point 2 SoC. Equipped with a 6-core 12-thread Zen 4 architecture CPU with a maximum frequency of 4.8 GHz, it has 16 MB L3 cache and integrates a Radeon RX 7600 (RDNA 3 architecture) graphics card.
This gaming device has now appeared in the GeekBench benchmarking library. Based on the specification parameters, the media believes that this device is not positioned as a handheld console but rather as a game console.
The biggest highlight of Fremont lies in the adoption of AMD Hawk Point 2 SoC. This processor contains a 6-core 12-thread Zen 4 architecture CPU with a base frequency of 3.2GHz and a maximum frequency of up to 4.8GHz. Supplemented by 16 MB L3 cache and 6 MB L2 cache.
Compared with the Steam Deck OLED (only 4-core 8-thread Zen 2, with a maximum main frequency of 3.5GHz and 4 MB L3 cache), the CPU scale and performance have been significantly enhanced.
In terms of GPU graphics, Fremont is equipped with Radeon RX 7600 (RDNA 3 architecture), which is expected to be an independent GPU, estimated to have 28 to 32 computing units and at least 8 GB of dedicated video memory. Compared with the Steam Deck series, which only has an 8CU (RDNA 2 architecture) integrated graphics card, its graphics performance has made a qualitative leap and can meet the requirements of console-level 3A games.
Fremont uses DDR5-5600 standard memory. The exposed prototype is only equipped with 8GB, which is less than the 16GB LPDDR5-8533 of the Steam Deck OLED. However, the performance increase brought by the new architecture is significant. The Geekbench 6 single-core 2412 and multi-core 7451.
Previously, there were rumors that the next-generation Steam Deck 2 would adopt the Aerith Plus SoC, but this has been denied. The SoC specifications used by Fremont are different from those of Aerith Plus and are more inclined towards the high-performance mainframe market.