- Valve’s new Steam Machine for gaming is scheduled for release in spring 2026, but pricing has yet to be announced
- Specs highlight major differences between new system and Steam Deck
- Steam Machine’s processor and specs suggest it could challenge current-gen consoles
It’s been literally years since rumors began about Valve’s plans for new hardware after the Steam Deck launches in 2022, and rumors are growing about a system that acts as a hybrid PC and console gaming setup. And now we finally have our answer: the new Steam Machine scheduled for release in Spring 2026. However, one of the main questions is, how does it 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 “more than six times more powerful than the Steam Deck,” thanks to a new processor and GPU that are capable of delivering performance that will surpass anything the handheld can offer.
Basically, the Steam Machine is not a handheld, so while a comparison between the two systems may not seem natural, it is the first system to follow the Steam Deck OLED while running SteamOS, and one that could potentially indicate what’s in store for a successor to the handheld in the future.
It’s worth noting that the specifications may very well change before its eventual release. But for now, let’s look at the key differences between the Steam Deck and the new Steam Machine…
1. Steam Machine has a significantly more powerful CPU and GPU
The Steam Deck LCD and Steam Deck OLED have never been considered powerful portable gaming devices, but they have managed to stay within the lists of the best portable 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 six times more powerful than the Steam Deck; Both the LCD and OLED models use a 4-core Zen 2 CPU and an RDNA 2 GPU with only eight compute units (the CPU and GPU are combined in the APU).
With the Steam Machine, Valve is aiming for much more power, using a 6-core AMD Zen 4 CPU and a ‘semi-custom’ AMD RDNA 3 GPU, with 28 compute units. Not only is there a big jump 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 lower-end Nvidia RTX GPU.
While those specs aren’t the be-all and end-all, it’s enough to put the Steam Machine and Steam Deck far apart from each other in terms of power and performance, as you’d expect from a PC designed for desktop and couch setups.
2. Steam Machine supports ray tracing and 4K gaming at 60fps
While the Steam Deck can play some games with ray tracing settings enabled (or at 4K resolution while maintaining decent frame rates), there aren’t many games where that’s possible without running into single-digit frame rates or having to use aggressive upscaling.
The Steam Machine seems determined to change that, with its spec sheet explicitly mentioning support for ray tracing and 4K gaming at 60fps using AMD’s FSR upscaling method.
For now, this should be FSR 3, as AMD has not yet ported FSR 4 to RDNA 3 hardware, but that may change when the Steam Machine is released (especially since the FSR 4 source code was accidentally leaked).
With ray tracing and 4K gaming at the forefront, this once again puts it out of 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 gaming (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 configured as allocated gaming RAM.
Overall, this should improve performance along with the updated processor and GPU, and give you more headroom for sustained frame rates by reducing stuttering issues, and this is what helps the Steam Deck when increased to 4GB from its default of 1GB.
4. Steam Machine connectivity highlights a hybrid nature of PC and home console.
If it wasn’t already clear enough, the Steam Machine moves away from the portable 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 that had the downside of losing performance at resolutions above 800p.
With the Steam Machine, Valve has clearly designed it to be a designated home console that can be used on a gaming monitor or TV, with two display output ports via DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0, and others such as 4 USB-A ports and 1 USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port.
There’s no sign of HDMI 2.1, but HDMI 2.0 (with chroma subsampling) still allows 4K gaming at 120Hz. DisplayPort 1.4 also supports 4K 240Hz, a big boost for any gamer on monitor setups.
There’s still a lot more information to come, as there’s no pricing information yet, and the question remains whether Valve’s new gaming system will replicate the Steam Deck’s affordable pricing model.
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