An Nvidia handheld PC gaming chip is reportedly within the works proper now, which might give some severe competitors to the AMD chip used within the Steam Deck. In keeping with this newest rumor, Nvidia is working with Taiwanese semiconductor agency Mediatek on the brand new handheld gaming chip, which is more likely to be way more highly effective than the Nvidia chip within the Nintendo Swap 2.
Solely the most effective handheld gaming PC gadgets on our information at present makes use of Nvidia silicon, and that’s the Razer Edge, which is essentially a cloud gaming gadget. The issue for Nvidia right here is that, in contrast to AMD, it doesn’t have an x86 license, and all the massive PC video games for Home windows are designed to run on the x86 instruction set. Until Nvidia plans to purchase up a agency with an x86 license, this alleged new chip’s CPU cores might be based mostly on the Arm structure.
This newest rumor comes from tech leaker XpeaGPU in a publish on X (previously Twitter). “Mediatek can be engaged on [a] gaming dealt with [sic] SoC with [an] Nvidia GPU,” the publish says. The rationale, in keeping with XpeaGPU, is that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang “is pissed off by Nintendo and he sees a great market potential.”
Though the Nvidia Nintendo Swap 2 GPU is formally nonetheless underneath wraps, the silicon-on-chip (SoC) within the new handheld is extensively rumored to be based mostly on a personalized model of Nvidia’s T234 Tegra chip from 2021, which has eight Arm CPU cores and a GPU based mostly on Nvidia’s last-gen Ampere structure.
That might be positive for Nintendo’s wants, bringing ray tracing and DLSS Tremendous Decision to the Swap platform for the primary time, however Nvidia clearly has the potential to make a way more highly effective SoC for handheld PC gaming gadgets with its newest GPU and CPU tech, utilizing its newest Ada structure. In keeping with a latest report by Financial Each day in China, Nvidia can be already working with Mediatek on an AI CPU for PCs, which it says might be produced by TSMC on its 3nm course of and will even be launched within the first half of 2025.
Arm could be a great match for a handheld gadget when it comes to warmth and energy effectivity, and is arguably a extra acceptable CPU structure to be used on a transportable video games console. The barrier for Nvidia might be getting sufficient of the PC’s large x86 video games again catalog ported over to Arm machine code. That gained’t be simple, but it surely’s not unimaginable for a corporation with Nvidia’s wealth and technical assets.
This isn’t the primary time we’ve heard whispers about an Nvidia Steam Deck rival, and it’s an apparent space the place Nvidia might have a bonus over AMD and Intel if it may possibly construct the momentum behind an Arm-based PC gaming platform.
In truth, there’s no motive why a future Steam Deck couldn’t be based mostly on Nvidia silicon. Within the meantime, for those who can’t wait to pay money for a PC gaming handheld, take a look at our Steam Deck OLED overview, as that is the present king of the crop.