What Graphics Card Does The Steam Deck Have?

The video player is supported by readers. When you make a purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Prices are subject to change. To learn more

For those wondering what graphics card is installed in the Steam Deck and how powerful it is, we have the answers.

Since the Steam Deck's release in 2022, gamers have been enjoying its gaming capabilities. What's impressive is that many games run with minimal controls, creating a relative difference between console and PC gaming setups. In fact, this tiny electric car packs a 40Wh battery and measures just 298 x 117 x 49mm. With the announcement of Valve's OLED Steam Deck, we expect renewed interest in the gaming console, especially with the already good Steam Deck deals arriving on Black Friday.

Here's everything we know about the Steam Deck GPU and what it's capable of.

What graphics card is installed on Steam Deck?

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

The APU combines the power of a Zen 2 CPU and an RDNA 2 GPU. Using these technologies, the Steam Deck can run at CPU speeds of 2.4-3.5 GHz (that's up to 448 GFlops FP32). In terms of GPU, the Steam Deck can run up to 1.6 teraflops FP32 at 1.0-1.66 GHz. The overall APU power range is 4-15W, although it's difficult to directly compare the Steam Deck APU to a desktop graphics card.

While the GPU specs look a bit modest, the Steam Deck is powered by 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM optimized for mobile devices.

If you're unsure whether this feature will allow you to play a game like Starfield on your Steam Deck, Steam Deck offers a verification process to see if the game is optimized for Steam Deck: If the game title has a green check mark, it means it is optimized for Steam Deck. If it has a small yellow circle with an "i" in it, it means the game can be played on the deck, but may require some changes to the game settings to run smoothly. If there is a gray circle with a line, it means the game cannot be played on the Steam Deck. A gray question in a dotted circle means that Steam doesn't yet know whether you can play the game on Steam Deck or not.

What graphics card is equivalent to the Steam Deck GPU?

We showed that the Steam Deck uses a dedicated AMD APU as its graphics card, with peak performance of around 1.6 teraflops. Based on what we know about graphics cards, the Steam Deck GPU is roughly equivalent to the Nvidia 1050 or GTX 950 released in 2016 and 2015, respectively.

FAQ

How much RAM does the Steam Deck have?

The Steam Deck has 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM.

Steam Deck has RTX.

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