Something to look forward to: As anticipation mounts for Valve's Steam Deck, the company will be offering a better look at various aspects of the device next week. One area that will be focused on during an upcoming virtual conference is a closer inspection of the handheld gaming console's AMD APU.
Valve will host a free, one-day online event on November 12 with the team who built Steam Deck. It's only open to Steamworks game developers, but expect information to spread beyond the platform soon after. And, as PC Gamer notes, should the event replicate previous Steamworks streams, an archive will probably be uploaded on the official YouTube channel.
Valve will be sharing "in-depth information and best practices to help you make your games a seamless experience on Steam Deck," with topics including development without a dev-kit, Steam on Deck, Proton support, and Steam input.
Notably, an APU "deep dive with AMD" will give us a better understanding of the CPU and GPU that will be powering the Steam Deck. Valve previously revealed that the handheld PC will be utilizing a custom AMD APU featuring a quad-core (eight threads) Zen 2 CPU, joined by eight RDNA 2 compute units.
A closer look at the tech offered by the Steam Deck should give us more insight about Steam Deck's compatibility program, a process consisting of checking the functionality of each game and grouping them into four categories that determines certain optimization levels for titles.
Developers received access to development kits months ago, and from the early feedback emerging from those studios, we've learned that users can expect 60 FPS gameplay in several AAA titles. Valve has also showcased a partial Steam Deck teardown, displaying the nuts and bolts of the system.
The Steam Deck is due for launch next month, but because of the demand, anyone who wants to pre-order one now will have to wait a while to get it. All three variants - 64GB/256GB/512GB - will be available sometime after Q2 2022.