There is no doubt that Valve is not afraid of the growing competition that has emerged in the portable console sector based on Ryzen 6000 series APUs, rather the opposite is true, as the Gab Newell-led company sees this confluence of devices as a unique opportunity to expand the reach of Steam OSoperating system used by Steam Deck.

So much so that Valve contacted GPD, the creator of the Win Max 2 console, to propose the development of an optimized version of the Steam operating system that would work perfectly with the Ryzen 7 6800U APU that the console can be attached to, and which offers really interesting performance thanks to the Zen 3 configuration + at the CPU level and RDNA2 at the GPU level.

The Ryzen 7 6800U APU is much more powerful than the APU that Steam Deck mounts because the former has a CPU 8 cores and 16 threads of Zen 3+ and GPU Radeon 680M with 768 shaders, while the Valve console has a CPU Zen 2 with 4 cores and 8 threads and GPU RDNA2 with 512 shaders.

In terms of raw power, there is no doubt that the GPD Win Max 2 is clearly superior to the Steam Deck, but the latter plays to the advantage that operating system completely optimized and adapted to its capabilities, something that, as we said, could change very soon, as Valve has offered to develop a customized and optimized version of the Steam operating system for the Ryzen 7 6800U APU.

What can I say, I think it’s great that Valve sees an opportunity to push Steam OS by looking beyond hardware when other companies saw nothing but direct competitionenemy, and you know how enemies are usually treated.

By offering an optimized version of Steam OS for GPD, it may seem like Valve is throwing rocks at its own roof, but in fact, the opposite happens, because as we said, it promotes and favors the standardization of the said operating system. If Valve plays their cards right, others may show interest in Steam OS powering their new consoles, and eventually the market will end up creating a “dynamic duo” thanks to the combination of the Ryzen APU and said OS.

We’ll see how it all plays out, but the truth is that I think Valve’s approach is very successful and I think Steam OS could eventually become reference operating system within its category.