When AMD announced its Z2 chip during its CES 2025 keynote, many thought that we’d see it appear in a fresh version of the Steam Deck. However, a Valve programmer cut those rumors short, stating: “There is and will be no Z2 Steam Deck.” This is especially surprising given that AMD itself implied that such a Steam Deck would one day become a reality.
AMD shared a slide that talks about its new Z2 range and shows three gaming handhelds that use AMD chips — the Steam Deck, the Lenovo Legion Go, and the Asus ROG Ally. That alone would be enough to give people the idea that a Z2 Steam Deck (perhaps a Steam Deck 2) is in the works. However, AMD has actually said that the Ryzen Z2 is “coming to market from a number of partners — the Legion Go, the ROG Ally, [and] the Steam Deck.”
Whatever speculation this may have stirred up was very short-lived. Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais took to BlueSky to deny that such a product is (or ever will be) in the works. Griffais also added: “Guessing the slide was meant to say the series is meant for products like that, not announcing anything specific.”
The Steam Deck currently runs on a custom AMD processor with four Zen 2 cores, but both Lenovo and Asus use the Z1 chip in their handhelds. Even the Z1 was able to outperform the Steam Deck, and the Z2 is expected to be an improvement; on the other hand, many enjoy the feel of Valve’s SteamOS, so it’s not a direct comparison.
AMD’s Z2 is also a bit of a mystery right now. We got some specs — which is more than can be said about RDNA 4 — but there’s no telling how much better these processors will be. AMD also promises better battery life, but with a higher TDP, that might be difficult to achieve.
We’ll have to see how the Z2 performs once it’s out in the wild, but one thing is for sure: It won’t be in the Steam Deck 2.
