Steam Machine and SteamOS hands-on

I want to see what they did for the ui

dictated but not read, nor fool proofed via my voice

 

I might try this seeing as I'm doing a fresh install right now. It shouldn't be a problem to partition of any drive and install it anyway.

 

Anyone know if you can put steam machine on VM ware workstation?

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Dang. My htpc has HD6450, so apparently I need to wait for a bit :/

 

SteamOS

Have usb3.0 external ssd laying around, but what exactly I am going to do with a linux(stripped) ~~.

 

make it pole dance or lap dance? decisions decisions....

 

Some screenshots from SteamOS.
Man so tempting to test this Linux OS out and see what advantages it have. Wonder if it gives a speedup in gaming compared to Windows.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU0MzY

 

That is supposedly what steam says. It would be cool to see some benchmark comparisons, on a dual boot with windows/steam

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Also curious to as what makes it so different/special when compared to say Ubuntu or another Linux based OS. I'll have to look into it.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I`m pretty sure there will be gaming reviews of this OS. Many sites have compared Win 7 vs Win 8 with various games so the same will most likely happen here too.

Let us know if you get to test it and how it is.

 

Is that a Mac mini

 

For those who haven`t UEFI BIOS, there is a workaround.

UEFI Requirement with SteamOS : SteamOS

 

Sadly there is no support yet for AMD cards

 

Quite the opposite. It is exactly same width as normal AV receiver, so it sits under my amp
http://www.am4computers.com/images/WB659EA.jpg

While a pretty basic system with C2D e8400/4GB, it has been perfectly capable to play videos. I only added the AMD card because the integrated displayport did not support audio out. Now if the streaming system works as advertised, I should be able to harness my desktop's gaming power on my htpc.

The next phase will be finding games that I'd like to play on my tv...

 

^Is this you?

Looks like it's a GTX 780 or Titan. Lucky SOB...

 

I wonder if they are still tweaking performance, and if they expect little or major performance gains in the future.

 

now i saw it

Video tour: The ins and outs of the SteamOS beta release | Ars Technica

its interesting, new things in there, or I'm just not used to console UI, in my time boy we just shoved a large piece of plastic in a slot and prayed that it would work

 

More Steam Machine footage from Corey Nelson: Corey Nelson - YouTube

 

FYI: Ifixit scored the steam machine 9 out of 10

Here is the link to the summary on CNET and the Original ifixit tear-down

 

So this is a Gnome 3 desktop with only a Steam client and a browser?

Edit: Looks like the Debian repos work just fine. Not sure where does the "locked down" story come from.

 

Valve has announced the twelve hardware partners they have so far. Besides Dell, it looks like the big-name PC OEMs are steering clear, as are Sager and Malibal.

Here are Valve's 12 Steam Machines partners (so far)

 

"Big-name PC OEM's" you mean HP, Lenovo, Acer, blah blah blah? Who gives a sh*t. They've never made competent gaming PC's anyway, especially not in a novel form factor. Steam Machines were always gonna be built by the boutique vendors and I'm satisfied with the current lineup. Most of the biggest names are in there. I'd add Maingear and Digital Storm as well, maybe in the future.

Sager and Malibal make desktops (specifically mini-ITX systems)? That's news to me.

 

I doubt Maingear since you can buy them from the MS store, but you never know.

 

Add another well-known boutique to that list. Digital Storm has been confirmed as a Steam Machines partner:

Digital Storm Unveils Bolt II, World's First Liquid Cooled Steam Machine | Maximum PC

 

logical question

#1 do having steam OS on computer make it a steam machine?

Or #2 only computer sold by steam partner is qualified to be called a steam machine?

If #2 is true, what should we call #1?

 

1. Yes

2. No

 

I don't see any scenario where this thing does not win the next generation.

My 200+ game steam collection probably cost me as much as 20-30 console games.

Consumers will like this, and enthusiasts are already onboard (always have been).

 

Will, you need to wait for the devs to port their stuff to Linux first.

 

#1 is only a steam machine if you have the controller to go with. #1 without a steam controller is a PC running the steam distro.

 

You can go ask Valve. Any PC running SteamOS is technically a "Steam machine" or "Steam box." The pre-built ones are being marketed as Steam Machines (note the capitalization) but there's nothing preventing you from building your own exactly like them, so in the end they're all the same thing. Let's not get tripped up on semantics here. Call if for what it is.

 

lol, brb while i go ask valve if my tongue-in-cheek definition is accurate enough for NBR.

 

Steam Machines is debuting with 14 manufacturers, not 12. Those two boutiques, Digital Storm and Maingear, that I mentioned I would like to see earlier are on board.

News - Valve Reveals First Gen Steam Machines

Pictures and specs of some of the machines are in this (massive) PDF. There are some familiar faces, including existing SFF systems such as the Falcon NW Tiki and Gigabyte Brix. Lots of great info--component lists, pricing, it's all in there--but the PDF is a massive CPU and memory hog, so don't blame me if it crashes your browser like it did mine.

EDIT: Here is the info in a more easily digestable format: Valve announces Steam Machine manufacturers, open to making its own | PC Gamer

Get this:

Steam Machines Pictures Galore | Maximum PC

Steam Machines Pictures Galore | Maximum PC

Alienware making an affordable/price-to-performance competitive Steam Machine? Ha! Who'd have thunk it?

 

Here's all of them together:

 

Very diverse specs. Early games gonna have a had time adapting to the hardware.

Why does the SCAN-NC10 has an i3?

 

Yeah, I thought part of the appeal of Steam Machines were standardized tiers of hardware that developers could optimize for. This is the same degree of diversity that you find in PC gaming. You're still going to have the same lack of hardware-specific optimization you have in PC gaming, and you're still going to have the same novice-unfriendly page of fifteen graphics settings for each game.

 

They replaced those setting pages with simple sliders/presets.

If you know what you're doing, the config file should still be accessible.

 

When they call both of these two steam machines, you know they have no consistency or a solid plan against consoles.
Without any standard, people can`t relate, and that will not help them against PS4 or Xbox One which have 1 design.
A console is a console. Steam Machine is....PC?

Valve would be better off with building the Steam Machine alone I think.

 

Steam machines are not about standards. Consoles are not "better" because it is a single machine. That's one and advantage and disadvantage. Steam machines are about letting the gamer decide what is his budget or how much he is willing to put into his machine.

Ideally, games would be made for everything, and the gamer would then choose what he wants to run it from. Some don't care about high end spec and fps, as long as they get playable performance, so they opt for the cheaper boxes. Others want the best visuals and performance, and they are free to do so. Both cases can play the game. Look at the current consoles. Gamers have no choice but to buy a nintendo console to play nintendo games. Xbox and ps4 are very similar specs and will get a huge library of multiplatform games. Xbox users will decidedly get the lower end performance on those, and they can't do anything about it because of the fixed hardware.

At this point tho, it's just an idea in beta or less than that. And steam machines are just PCs that less savvy people can opt for instead of asking around on how to build a gaming computer having no experience. They are not, for now, aiming to dethrone consoles whatsoever.

 

That's not how Gabe Newell has pitched them:

Gabe Newell: Living Room PCs Will Compete With Next-Gen Consoles

News coverage of these has understandably followed Newell's lead in treating them as console competitors:

Valve Lines Up Console Partners in Challenge to Microsoft, Sony - Bloomberg

 

Given the content available, they are not going directly against PC.
Windows PC gaming has a large collection of existing titles and it's mostly continues without any sudden drop in backward compatibility. Stream on Linux is like a new console atm with not many launch titles and no backward compatibility. More content is expected down the line as game devs develop for it (if they do).

I prefer to look at Stream Machine as a spec-flexible console with native mouse/keyboard support.