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Darc Requiem on 26 September 2025
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Bofferbrauer2 said:
Darc Requiem said:

They need to have APU with same memory bus as Strix Halo. One of the biggest boat anchors around improved APU performance is memory bandwith. Strix Halo has a 256-bit memory bus instead of typical 128-bit bus. Doubling the memory bandwidth would do wonders for performance. 

There are other and better alternatives than this. For doubling the bandwidth you'd need to thicker boards made of more layers, which strongly increases their price. It's one of the reasons why entry-level GPUs come with such small bandwidths

  • HBM: Would eliminate the bottleneck but at a hefty price, so probably not worth it
  • GDDR7: Would be very fast, but capacity could be a concern.
  • LPDDR5X: Samsung is now producing LPDDR5X-9600 memory, which would strongly increase the bandwidth over the LPDDR5 memory in the Steam Deck with minimal changes
  • DDR6: Expected in 2027, it increases bandwidths considerably as it comes with speeds ranging from DDR6-8800 to DDR6-17600. So if there's no successor until then this could be a very viable option.

So yeah, there are a lot of alternatives, some more sensible than expanding the bus to 256 bit.

The only one of those memory types that would see use in a PC handheld is LPDDR5X. The other memory types you listed are a complete non starter. Pemalite's suggestion of using larger cache sizes to compensate for the low memory bandwidth seems to be the best option. Still, I worry about the growing gulf in bandwith between PC handhelds and even low end dGPUs. 

What I really was going to post about is the $1000 Xbox Rog Ally X price. Remember when Phil Spencer said this...

https://wccftech.com/microsoft-gaming-ceo-gives-subtle-dig-at-ps5-pro-price-were-not-growing-the-market-with-1000-consoles/

The guy is a walking contradication. Mattrick may started Xbox's decline but Phil Spencer was the one that killed the brand.