What graphics card does the Steam Deck have?

For anyone wondering what graphics card the Steam Deck has, and how powerful it is, we’ve got answers.

Since the Steam Deck came out in 2022, gamers have been enjoying the gaming power it yields. It’s impressive that so many games run on little control giving the relative side of the console versus PC gaming set ups. Indeed this little powerhouse manages to pack a punch of 40Whr battery in only 298mmx117x49mm. With Valve’s announcement of an OLED Steam Deck, we’re expecting a renewed interest in the gaming console, especially with some good Black Friday Steam Deck deals already cropping up.

Here’s everything we know about the Steam Deck GPU and its powers.

What graphics card does the Steam Deck have?

The Steam Deck uses a Zen 2/RDNA 2 custom AMD APU for its graphics card.

The APU is a combined force of Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU. With these technologies, the Steam Deck can handle 2.4-3.5GHz for CPU (that’s up to 448 GFlops FP32). On the GPU end, the Steam Deck can run up to 1.6 TFlops FP32 at 1.0-1.66GHz. The overall power of the APU comes out at 4-15W, though it’s tricky to directly compare the Steam Deck’s APU with a desktop graphics card.

While the GPU specs appear a bit modest, the Steam Deck is bolstered by its RAM memory – boasting 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM that is optimized for mobile hardware.

If you are unsure whether this capacity will allow you to run a game like Starfield on your Steam Deck, Steam Deck have a verification process that lets you know if a game has been optimized for Steam Deck. If a game has a green tick on the title image then it is optimised for Steam Deck. If there is a small yellow circle with an ‘i’ within it, then the game is playable on Steam Deck but might require some changing of the game settings to make it work smoothly. If there is a grey circle with a line through it then the game cannot be played on Steam Deck. A grey question in a dotted line circle means that Steam doesn’t know yet if you can play the game on Steam Deck or not.

What is a Steam Deck GPU equivalent video card?

We’ve explained that the Steam Deck uses an AMD custom APU as its graphics card, with a maximum output of about 1.6 teraflops. Based on what we know about graphics cards, it makes Steam Deck’s GPU roughly equivalent to a Nvidia 1050 or GTX 950, which was released in 2016 and 2015 respectively.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much RAM does the Steam Deck have?

The Steam Deck has an RAM of 16GB LPDDR5.

Does Steam Deck have RTX?

No, at the time of writing, the graphics card within the Steam Deck is an AMD APU combining Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU.