Steam Machine vs Steam Deck (OLED)
Machine: Living-room SteamOS PC. Roughly PS5-class rasterisation — a true 1080p/1440p machine that reaches 4K 60 via FSR, not the native-4K box the marketing implies. 8 GB VRAM is its real ceiling. Valve pegs it at about 6× the Steam Deck's GPU.
Deck: The mature handheld. We don't re-rank what ProtonDB and SteamDeckHQ already own — Deck appears here as a comparison baseline and a first-party data source (real measured FPS power 215 game pages).
| Spec | Machine | Deck |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1,049 | $549 |
| Type | console | handheld |
| Platform | SteamOS | SteamOS |
| Release | June 25, 2026 | OLED: November 2023 (LCD: February 2022) |
Bars are relative — longer is stronger. For price & power draw, lower is better; power draw is neutral (handhelds trade power for battery).
- $1,049
- Price
- $549
- Semi-custom AMD RDNA 3 — 28 CU, up to 2.45 GHz (110 W)
- GPU
- AMD RDNA 2, 8 CU (~1.6 TFLOPs)
- ~Radeon RX 7600 / GeForce RTX 4060 class
- GPU equivalent
- —
- Semi-custom AMD Zen 4 — 6 cores / 12 threads, up to 4.8 GHz (30 W)
- CPU
- AMD Zen 2 'Sephiroth' (6 nm) — 4 cores / 8 threads
- 8 GB GDDR6 (dedicated graphics memory)
- VRAM
- shared (16 GB unified)
- 16 GB DDR5 (system)
- Memory
- 16 GB LPDDR5 (6400 MT/s)
- 1080p–1440p native · 4K 60 with FSR upscaling
- Realistic target
- 800p handheld (1280×800)
- SteamOS
- Platform
- SteamOS
Living-room SteamOS PC. Roughly PS5-class rasterisation — a true 1080p/1440p machine that reaches 4K 60 via FSR, not the native-4K box the marketing implies. 8 GB VRAM is its real ceiling. Valve pegs it at about 6× the Steam Deck's GPU.
The mature handheld. We don't re-rank what ProtonDB and SteamDeckHQ already own — Deck appears here as a comparison baseline and a first-party data source (real measured FPS power 215 game pages).
Frequently asked
What's the difference between the Steam Machine and the Steam Deck (OLED)?
Steam Machine: Living-room SteamOS PC. Roughly PS5-class rasterisation — a true 1080p/1440p machine that reaches 4K 60 via FSR, not the native-4K box the marketing implies. 8 GB VRAM is its real ceiling. Valve pegs it at about 6× the Steam Deck's GPU. Steam Deck (OLED): The mature handheld. We don't re-rank what ProtonDB and SteamDeckHQ already own — Deck appears here as a comparison baseline and a first-party data source (real measured FPS power 215 game pages).
Is the Steam Machine or the Steam Deck (OLED) cheaper?
The Steam Deck (OLED) is cheaper at $549, versus $1049 for the Steam Machine.
Which should I buy — the Steam Machine or the Steam Deck (OLED)?
Same SteamOS library, different jobs. The Machine is a TV console with ~6× the Deck's GPU by Valve's figure (28-CU RDNA 3 vs 8-CU RDNA 2), aiming at 1080p–1440p and 4K 60 with FSR, from $1,049. The Deck is an 800p handheld from $549 ($399 LCD) with 3–12 h of battery. Big screen → Machine; on the go → Deck.
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