Valve Fremont teased: SteamOS console has AMD Zen 4 CPU, RDNA 3 GPU to fight Xbox, PlayStation

Can you imagine Valve stepping into the console market with a SteamOS-powered device? Well, that's what the new "Valve Fremont" could be, and it would compete against PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

In a swirl of rumors over the weekend, the Valve Fremont turned up and it could be a new console that plugs into your TV, found by Redditor "Coolbho3k" who discovered a change in the Steam Deck Kernel by a Valve staffer, who was testing something called "Fremont".

Valve's purported Fremont device appeared to have an AMD "Lilac" chip, but Brad Lynch from EOZ (which makes VR straps) posted on X that Quanta Computer is manufacturing the Valve Fremont device. Brad thinks that the Lilac was the original PCB that Valve used in its first prototype of Fremont, but now has a completely different, fully finished board.

Brad explained: "All references to Fremont ensure checks for a full-size HDMI Type-A port you'd see on TV-focused consoles and other desktop computers that don't have a dedicated GPU with its own HDMI ports".

• Read more: Half-Life 3 to push boundaries of game physics, destruction, NPC AI behavior
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• Read more: Valve rumored to not be working on one, but TWO new Half-Life games says leaker

In another post on X, Brad continued: "Valve Fremont cannot be a dock. The information that @FoxletFox found for us specifically notes that the full-size HDMI port is hardwired to the hosts's card0 (GPU) directly, not connected through USB-C. And again, the GPU in this case would be built into the AMD APU, of course. So very likely not a handheld that can be Docked to a TV. But a fully dedicated device with HDMI-Out as a primary focus".

I find this interesting, as we know Valve is cooking up a next-generation Half-Life 3 (more about that in the links above) which would be a gigantic, game-changing release in 2025. Can you imagine, Valve releasing a console-style product -- Fremont -- onto the market to compete with Xbox and PlayStation, in the same year that Rockstar is launching Grand Theft Auto 6?

Are we living in the timeline that Valve not only releases its own console, but Half-Life 3 and we get GTA 6 in the same year? 2025 is going to be amazing... of course, Valve doesn't need to release a Fremont console, it could just be playing with prototyping something for fun. However, we know HL3 is coming... so a new console now makes sense for their future plans.