SteamMachine prototype hardware: small and powerful

Valve's Steam Machine prototype is tiny, potentially powerful

Performance should be great, but that much hardware squeezed into that size of a package? It's not going to be cheap. I'm assuming it'd cost at least $1,000, perhaps more, which is a hard sell for most consumers when Valve says it's meant to compete directly with a $399 PS4.

 

Nevertheless, great configs. If I would to build a desktop now it would be something like this.

 

I think this is a great product for the serious PC gamer. I just don't see it as eating into the Microsoft/Sony console market, which is what Gabe Newell pitched it as. Once you set aside that claim and just look at it as a small-profile Linux gaming PC...it has the potential to be awesome, just like the Alienware X51 is awesome in its own compact-gaming-PC way.

 

I don't understand why they'd have an i3 model, when the dual core will be struck dead by next-gen gaming requirements. An i5 quad core should be the minimum CPU spec.

 

the desktop i3 has HT, strange I know, I stopped trying to understand intel desktop line up

 

I would buy this over a console. And I thought I $499 for the base model.

 

There is only ONE quadcore i5 as far as I know, and that's the flagship one (2500(K), 3570(K), 4670(K), etc). All the rest ought to be dual core hyperthreading. And honestly they aren't too bad at all, they do a lot of gaming well. The dual core i5s should murder the old core 2 extreme quad core chips.

 

Nope all desktop i5 are quad-core.

 

It's not that tiny.. it's about the same size as a console...or close to the size of the zvox 220 I have on the shelf under my 40" tv..

 

Since it's using off the shelf hardware, I really don't get the point of this. Even from a marketing point, it's really stupid. Let's sell SteamBox/SteamMachine that's no different than $500 of items off a NewEgg bundle sale? Really...?

Whatever.

At least it's better than that other supposed steambox using only a 7660G AMD crap APU.

 

I like it, if anything I want the case, its smaller than the FT03 mini and for me thats the best and smallest SFF case

 

I'd love to see them stuff a titan in a case the size reported and approach anything near quiet with adequate cooling.

Also, the ps4 and xb1 will be plenty powerful, the amd hardware in there is just fine.

 

err its not going to be quiet, there was some tid bit about noise somewhere

 

I think you have to much faith in Amd they are using them because it is cheap which translates low performance and we all know what happens with cheap components.

 

The proof is just reality. There's plenty of fantastic looking ps3 games out right now. The ps4 is MUCH faster. This console generation will work out just fine. Doesn't mean I'm not going to keep up with my pc side of things.

 

True that Ps4 or xbox 1 will not even come close to a Good gaming PC. now the steam box is going to be A wait and see.

 

I wonder about how much faster it really is. The 7660G or whatever cheap GPU is used by these APU, how good is it really? And is the AMD CPU really that much better than PS3's Cell processor?

Wait and see I suppose.

 

Valve Says Steam Machines Wont be exclusive to Nvidia

 

so no via graphics? not buying one

 

Why so many configs? I think i5 as standard with a choice of GTX 760 or GTX 780. Throw in 16GB RAM, 2TB 7200RPM HDD, and let users choose their own SSD. Done.

Throwing too hot components in this won't help matters much. If it's intended to be in the living room, you want it as quiet as possible.

And why are they partial to nVidia? Consoles get AMD so why not the Steam box? Make it Mantle programmable.

 

As far as I know nVidia is working with Valve on SteamBox project as well.

 

Did you read my link? They just stated they will use Nvidia, Amd and Intel.

 

Nope I didn't. Missed your post. I read some article on THG long ago, guess things changed since then.
In that case does it even make sense. Valve will be just like the other hardware manufacturers selling rigs. The only difference is it will come with their own OS.

 

Yeah. Doesn't quite make sense. Make it like a console, except maybe some limited upgrades as previously noted like two GPU options and user upgradeable storage.

 

They stated you could change the OS, upgrade the video card, the ram, the HDDs, I don't know about motherboard/CPU, but they even stated their controller was hackable and moddable... I think they want to sell a good basic machine built for steam and most steam games using their new OS and if the consumer sees it fit to alter their new machine, why stop them?

 

I know, but my point is how is this different than any other PC then? If they standardized it, it might appeal to more people. Otherwise many "console" users will be overwhelmed with the options. Call them "High End" and "Ultra" where "High End" is GTX 760, i5, 16GB RAM, 1TB HDD, 256GB SSD and "Ultra" is GTX Titan, i7, 16GB, 2TB HDD, 512GB SSD. or something like that.

 

I'd like to get my hands on one to mess with but I doubt the pre-fab stuff will convince me to not just build my own.

Especially since when I upgrade my Main PC I can just hand me down old parts that are still far better than the SteamMachine.

 

I have to agree with this.

Simply a standartization of the machines would be a good thing, however then we have the problem, valve aint going to build the units. BUT that doesnt mean that they cant set standards and tiers

it would be a great thing if they had more control at whats going to be offered as a steambox, complete control would be perfect. Saying this is entry, this is middle and this is high end is truly the best approach

 

Gabe Newell is pretending that SteamMachines can have all the upsides of consoles AND all of the upsides of gaming PCs, without the downsides of either, and that's a physical impossibility. As you said, the "everything is customizable" point he's pitching so hard deprives game developers from optimizing performance and settings for one set of hardware.

 

They kind of already do. There's three variants, one with a 760 and an i5 I think and one with a Titan and an i7, but if you get a steam box and want to add something not already there, for example, you can. But of course, downgrading the machine is kind of pointless. It *IS* basically a PC, but with the Steam OS, and a steam controller, and steam installed, which primarily is made for couch gaming.

 

prototypes dont really transcribe to actual products, aside that there is no amd model and intel only model that they already said they will use.

its going to be very scattered

 

Hope they're not forecasting to sell many of those units with the Titans since most people willing to spend that much money will build a system exactly to their liking...

Anywho, very interested to see what's in store.

 

should have used AMD :/ unless they are going for the physicx thing

 

No need. The graphics card paired with the Cell can run about half the amount of shader-operations compared with the graphics card in the ps4. The processor can provide faster single-threaded performance as well. So it translates to a box that is somewhat better than the ps3 for unoptimized multiplatform games.

In addition, there are these smaller things that let certain opencl-accelerated functions run reasonably well, making it a reasonably acceptable gaming rig. In fact, it's the same type of setup that the steam-box will have, just in a smaller package and less annoying drm-s***.

What you won't see on the ps4 is the cell-processor, or what made that interesting. Namely asynchronous parallelized processing via multiple processing elements on a unified main memory area.

In English, that's the kind of thing that enables you to create 3d scenes and apply high-level logic to graph-functions and elements in it. Anything from smart occlusion handling (say... 80% of the rendering time on a sli-rig in 1080+ is not actually seen on the screen), to extremely complex interference between animation splines, as well as correction on animation based on actual objects in the scene you're playing.

None of this is possible to do on "cutting edge" PC hardware, at least with the level of fidelity we expect in terms of texture depth and resolution, model complexity, and so on.

And the thing is that without hardware with a unified bus, we're not going to have the opportunity to move ahead on this. Even if we all know this hardware exists, and that the solutions you can create on it are fantastic - demonstrably so - it doesn't matter because "the market" decides this hardware shall not be made.

So therefore we have AMD and Intel. And that's all there is, for as long as these companies exist. We got Tegra, of course. And that's a good attempt. But it's not going to compete with cheap specialized hardware with single core, single threaded, extra module based acceleration, etc. That's just how it is, because this hardware proves to be cheaper to make, and it can still be sold in products to technical analphabets for more money than it's worth.

So congratulations, I guess. We apparently got what we wanted.