46
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Valve's secretive 'Fremont' gaming device surfaces in benchmarks
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- Title
- Valve's secretive 'Fremont' gaming device surfaces in benchmarks with 2X more processing power than Steam Deck OLED - device powered by six-core Zen 4 CPU and RX 7600 GPU
- Authors
- Zhiye Liu
- Published
- Aug 20 2025
- Word count
- 557 words
Very interesting.
The timing feels right for a Steam Console. The situation has changed quite a lot since their first attempt with Steam Boxes. Compatibility is vastly better, the floor on hardware power has increased significantly, and Valve has the hardware chops to build the box themselves instead of farming it out. GPUs are obscenely expensive and people are increasingly getting sick of Windows. If they keep prices low by selling these as loss leaders like they have been Steam Decks, they’ll probably sell quite a few.
Don't care much about a non-mobile platform for Steam for me, given I have plenty of desktops to do that job. But I would assume that this will be sold for a reasonable price and will only make PC gaming even more accessable and mainstream, something I wouldn't have dreamed of back in the 90s. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing though, as it seems like a lot of the time once my favorite things have mainstream appeal, they tend to begin losing the things that made them special in the first place.
That said, I've loved my Steam Deck for over 3 years now, so it can't be all bad. And I also hope whatever this research is applies to a Deck 2; I don't need more power, as I'm happy playing older games and indies mostly, but it would be a nice boon.
I don't think PC gaming is going to go downhill from being more "mainstream" - it's already mainstream. And I would argue we have a larger variety of games today than we ever had before.
In researching for a previous comment, I found that there's now 40% more PC gamers than console gamers. PC gaming is about as mainstream as it gets. An affordable console experience PC would probably get a few more people who were already interested on board, but people who are interested have already been able to get into PC gaming with a modest laptop or pre built desktop, which can play basically any indie game or a lot of the older multiplayer live service games on low settings.
Both the "mainstream" and "downhill" already happened a long time ago with PC gaming. I pin it on the 6th console generation (Xbox 360/PlayStation 3). This was when we stopped seeing big budget PC exclusives with most major releases developed with a console as the lead platform and PC getting a port.
Today we have major publishers like Capcom saying PC accounts for more than half of their total sales. PC is as mainstream as it gets.
Reading the title comparing this to the steamdeck I kind of assumed it was a steamdeck successor, but no its some sort of desktop/console... The steamdeck is great but I WOULD REALLY HOPE that a non portable device would have at least 2x the processing power.
I hope that whatever this new device is, it does well enough to warrant looking into bringing a similar powered chip into the steam deck successor.
I would drop everything to buy a steam console in a heartbeat
I’ve got hundreds upon hundreds of games on steam and bought a ps5 a couple years ago to satisfy the desire to play on my tv. A steam console would be a vastly superior option for me.
Streaming with steam link or moonlight just is too janky for me
Not sure the last time you tried Steam Streaming, but it's gotten way better recently. I do have my steam link hardwired and made an upgrade to my router in the last year. However I think part of the improvement has come from steam's upgrades to the desktop app as they align it with the steam deck. I've had a really smooth experience streaming from desktop (on WiFi) to both the steam link and the steam deck.
If it's been a while since you've tried using steam streaming I'd recommend giving it another shot. They may have pushed some upgrades in support of this new hardware that improves the streaming experience. I think it's smoother, more polished, and more stable than a few years ago. 👀
I've personally tried it, and I find it to be a bit of a jank fest. But then again, I'm using Linux as the host and the guest, so I do wonder if there are issues around that.
There really are. I abandoned my Linux desktop in favour of a Mac desktop, and set my big Linux box to be basically a steam box. You boot it with the security key in place, and it starts the OS straight to desktop and starts the sunshine service.
I then remote it with moonlight from the Mac, and it’s flawless 1440/60
With standard steam remote play, it often doesn’t start, has higher latency and worse sound.
IMO it’s Linux on the server side that’s the issue. It was problems with Wayland that pushed me over the edge finally. Couldn’t be bothered to deal with that any more.
Interesting! That's an important detail I forgot to mention. My only experience has been with Windows as the host.
Definitely an interesting device, especially as a revival of the Steam Box concept of the early 2010s. I've had a Steam Deck for almost a year now and it's a great little mobile PC. The SteamOS experience is really polished, same with Proton. I haven't had to do any sort of manual configuration to get things to work right. There's a healthy customization community and it just feels like a console that I can play computer games on. With Xbox slowly declining, I wonder if Steam could slowly take its place with a new SteamBox, especially for the right price.
This is reminding me of the steam machines line that flopped pretty hard. I thought at the time that Valve should have made one as the "standard" one to point people to.
Hopefully this gets the same love the steam deck gets, and it gets priced reasonably.
Saying that the Steam Machines flopped isn't completely accurate when you consider that Valve's goal might not have actually just been to sell Steam Machines.
Around the time Steam Machines were being developed and sold, there were rumors about Microsoft starting to lock down Windows to only run applications distributed through the Windows store. The same store that at the time only supported applications built on the new Windows runtime and not the classic Windows API that has been in use for decades. A move like that would have effectively ended Steam as we know it, possibly entirely.
Steam Machines were Valve's way of flexing their muscles to show that if push comes to shove, people will abandon Windows for their games if they have to. When the topic of switching to Linux comes up, one of the common excuses for staying on Windows is games so what would happen if that reason didn't matter anymore? Microsoft eventually backed down from their plan so there wasn't a need for Valve to continue with Steam Machines.
On top of that, Steam Machines succeeded in bringing Linux into the gaming conversation like it never was before. The work on Steam Machines kicked off Proton which is now at the heart of Steam OS.
Not to mention that steam OS was invented for the steam machines, which is now what's running on the steam deck.
The steam deck is a steam machine, functionally. The non portable steam machines were more of an early adopter beta test that valve didn't really have to invest a ton of resources into.
Steam OS for the Steam deck was built entirely new. The original Steam OS only served as inspiration for the current version. I am sure valve learned a lot about how to build a gaming operating system from the failed first attempt, but the original OS is not related to the current one.
Yes, but it was the first iteration. They may have gone back to the drawing board and rebuilt based on a new upstream, but the overall concept of the operating system was the same. That's pretty normal for long running software projects. Windows is still windows even though windows 98 and Windows XP used completely different kernels. The versions on steam machines were SteamOS 1.0, which was then iterated on for 2.0. Steam decks were shipped with 3.0, which was the rebuild. Same concept for the OS, and some reused components, but a totally different architecture.
If steamOS 3.0 existed when steam machines were first launched, that's what they'd be running.
I could be misreading, but where/are people getting the idea that Fremont would be a non-portable from? I don't think anything here suggests that, aside from the fact that the CPU is newer.I cannot frickin' read.If it is a non-portable system... I'd have to wonder about the price point. Console manufacturers famously sell consoles at a loss and make it up with games. I wonder if that's what they're going for?
In the article, it mentioned that the GPU that Geekbench detected was desktop RX 7600. While it’s possible that they’ve found a way to fit that into a portable form factor, it seems unlikely given power and thermal constraints.
Valve has also stated that they plan to keep the Deck pinned at roughly the same power level, which makes sense because that’s how you slim it down and improve its battery life without sacrificing raw horsepower; you take advantage of efficiency increases brought by newer hardware to achieve the same performance with less heat and power consumption.
I just reread it and immediately saw it mentioned. I appear to be a dumb dumb who can't read. Thank you.
I would buy a Steam console that I can hook to my TV and then play PC games on. Sure thing. Much better value add than a PlayStation, which I did indeed sell.
I'll worry about vendor lock in afterwards. So far the Steam garden isn't yet walled off from the outside.
Good news, it already exists. The Steam Deck Dock allows exactly that.
Yeah but not quite. I own the dock too but it's not quite a console. Requires some additional peripherals too.
Something made to be connected to a TV and stay there would be nice.
One thing I don't see talked about here is the staying power of old names as well. It would have been crazy to see last Gen games or even those released in the previous two sold for close to full price.
To me, it's the sign of an industry losing energy and the AAA model failing, but it's the sort of circumstances that are perfect for Valve to jump in and take their share of the console space, too.
I wish them the best and would really like a Deckard.
I feel like that's the opposite? Games reduce in price because demand falls for them such that you make more money lowering the price to adjust to the new level of demand. If games are staying full price for longer, that indicates that demand is staying stronger for longer.
I guess I should clarify what I mean by energy. The energy is most certainly there to buy old games at full price, but that people are satisfied with old titles and that studios would rather make new things that look like old things (and relying on that for cash input) instead of making new things to chase after new money with each successive console launch/tech bump.