Valve Claims Steam Machine Outperforms 70% of Current Gaming PCs
Valve Claims Steam Machine Outperforms 70% of Current Gaming PCs
www.techpowerup.com /342970/valve-claims-steam-machine-outperforms-70-of-current-gaming-pcs
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I'm sure it does, considering even my old busted laptop has hit the Steam hardware survey before, but it's not one of my primary gaming PCs.
Another way of saying this is Steam Machine is slower than about 44 million gaming PCs (30% x 147 MAU, a very conservative number since that's monthly and number of users instead of number of computers).
The fact that its GPU is slower than the 5 year old PS5's, and it only has 8GB VRAM, makes me question Steam Machine's longevity. And it apparently can't do FSR4 cause it's RDNA3.
It needs to be cheap.
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I'm rocking a 2060 with an astounding 6GB VRAM... And the only game that gave me trouble so far is Clair Obscur. I had to close everything else, and use a mod to optimize the graphics.
I'll blame the shitty Nvidia drivers for Linux though, cause there is no shared RAM, unlike on Windows. 8GB with an AMD card should be fine -if a bit limiting- for a generation, except for high end AAA gaming I guess.
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I just replaced that exact card in my machine last week in preparation for dual booting Linux for the first time (I needed a new NVME as a Linux drive and figured I'd future-proof my setup at the same time with an RX 9070 XT for the native AMD drivers), and the only games that I hadn't been able to run on medium-high settings had been unoptimized games, bad ports, and early access stuff like Monster Hunter: Wilds and Cities Skylines 2.
IMO 8 gigs is plenty for the average person, all things considered.
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This thing has 1/6th the ongoing utility cost of a spec’d out gaming pc (assuming 850w psu and something like 4090 and 7900x3d). Granted it’s not much to run a pc like that, like 15-20 a month, but running this thing will cost like $2-3 at most. Its power supply is 43% smaller than a ps5s.
Not gonna be the deciding factor for most people but something to consider. Does 4k120 really matter vs 4k60? Do you really need to turn every slider to ultra? In a world that is boiling with energy costs that are ever increasing?
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In my humble opinion, 4k is a bit of a joke. I pick a high as possible frame rate over 4k any day of the week.
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Power optimization of chips has long been good enough to make that a completely moot point. Unless you're doing something 100% of the time like crypto mining, or extremely pressed on the price of power, it doesn't matter.
Even top of the line CPUs and GPUs idle at extremely low wattage.
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Lol with multiple gaming PCs, you are far far removed from the target consumer. Im pretty sure it will be cheap. Unlike PC hardware manufacturers they can do what the console companies do and price at/below cost and make it up in game sales.
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It has to be $400 or $500. If they, Valve, really think they're sitting on a $800 or even a $1,000 machine then they're lying to themselves.
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Depends on Tarriffs. Unfortunately a $500 PC in 2024 can be like an $800 PC now due to Trumpflation.
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I saw a really good video from someone who seemed very well-informed do a bill of materials analysis and come to the conclusion that it will be priced between $449 and $599 depending on how aggressive Valve wants to be, with the caveat that the current tariffs and RAM pricing could throw that off. The BOM for it totaled $425, from what I recall. It seemed like quite a bit better analysis than the wild guesses some other people have been throwing out, like $1200, etc.
Here, I found it in my history - someone here on Lemmy had recommended it to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJI3qTb2ze8
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It'll be a mistake if they just put the tag of 500 dollars on the steam store.
It'll be much much better if they put a fake price like, 1500 dollars but it's discounted to 500.
People are dumb enough to fall for that, lol
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Source on RDNA3 on Linux not doing FSR4? Linux drivers are far ahead of Windows drivers.
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Source is RDNA3 not being able to handle FP8 on any OS. It just can't do FSR4.
There is an unofficial INT8 version of FSR4 that was leaked from AMD that works on RDNA3, but it's a lot slower, and FSR4 is already pretty heavy.
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https://gpuopen.com/fidelityfx-super-resolution-4/
uses the hardware-accelerated feature of the AMD RDNA™ 4 architecture
AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution 4 upscaling requires an AMD Radeon RX 9000 Series GPU or better and can only be used on appropriate hardware.
Requirements
[FSR 4 Upscaling] AMD Radeon™ RX 9000 Series and above
It's possible they add compatibility at a later time (with reduced performance and/or quality due to lack of hardware acceleration), but they haven't announced anything like that currently
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Steam survey is monthly too and most people don't have two computers
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At most they have a PC and a work laptop!
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It needs to be cheap.
However, when comparing to the power of locked up device such as ps5, it never hurts reminds that the supposed GPU processing power of a ps5 doesn't come for free... even if you've fully paid your console. Aside for demos or jailbreaked devices (piracy on console) the only way to run graphics at full potential on the locked ps5 is paying full AAA (which now is settling around 80$/€) for EACH product. There are alternatives in the spending (ie: the Netflix alike from Sony's store)... but those are only options that Sony allow you to (you can't run weekly free games from EGS, itch.io... or even web browser games!).
Whatever power you pay for any generic PC potentially cover you in any way: you can play arcade vector games as Asteroid at 4k (or even teorical 32K when the hardware will exists).
The difference Valve could make is showing the topical console gamer customer an easy to use access to it: once they'll see the light... things may go different also for console-only customers (Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo wouldn't want to lose more customers to Valve's better deal)
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Looks like many do forgot, this is mid-cheap intended machine, not top tier tech race.
Still some depends on price, but I'm hyped for 500€ upgrade of whole 6yo rig, all in one, well build (not like most supermarket prebuild crap). I see flaws in Cube, may need to spend some 100€ extra for missing things (sdd to usb adapters, audio extractor from hdmi to 3.5jacks, extra sdcard for less intense data), still hyped.
Like this is cheap family car talks, Koenigsegg is 2 links to the left.
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+1 for Koenigsegg. always have been some of the coolest cars around.
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They need to price this properly and all will be fine.
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Just wanted to post this video. If this tiny undervolted, underpowered, palm sized APU machine can run these games at these FPS, I am willing to bet that steam machines gonna run games without dropping a sweat at 4k.
Also, a portable Steam Deck can run BG3. Steam machines will be fine.
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I rarely play the latest games, so that machine would be a good upgrade for me. Especially with the ability to load a different OS that I could use for both productivity and gaming.
Bump it to a bigger SSD and 64GB of RAM and I'll be happy with it.
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SteamOS in desktop mode is still pretty great for productivity, im pretty sure you can set it to automatically boot into desktop mode too.
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The majority of gamers game at 1080p. Both on PCs, and especially on consoles. Most people's TVs aren't even big enough for people with average eyesight to see a difference between 1080p and 2160p.
So the question to ask is if the steam deck is too slow, because the steam machine at 1080p will solidly beat the steam deck at 800p.
If you want something faster for desktop, just build a matx mid tower with a 9070xt. It'll cost double, but you'll be able to game in 2160p.
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Most people's TVs aren't even big enough for people with average eyesight to see a difference between 1080p and 2160p.
Why do people keep repeating something so easily disprovable? You can tell 1080p and 1440p apart on a laptop, let alone 1080p to 4k on a TV.
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It really depends on your viewing distance and the size of the display. If you're sitting 15 feet away fom a 55 inch TV, the difference between 1440p and 4k is going to be a lot less noticable than when you're 2 feet from a 32 inch monitor.
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It depends how far away you sit. And size (inches) of the TV. You sit closer to a laptop than a TV.
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If you have 20/20 vision, you need to sit 2 meters away from a 55" to be able to tell the pixels apart. You might see some improvement from 4K but it wont be that significant. If you are 3-4 meters away, you need a bigger TV if you want to start thinking about gaming in 4K.
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It's all about PPI. Pixels per inch.
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I knew it. I still clicked but I knew it. The sound in my head. It has never stopped.
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Around the wuuuurld around nhe wuuurrrld
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If anyone knows this is steam. I belive them
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Yes, but mostly because most of the gaming PCs in Steam's hardware survey are not really gaming PCs but just some piss poor spec laptops that can still run old games. Just having a dedicated GPU puts it in the top half.
The GPU in this is in the 7600 RX range of things. It's marketed as a 1080p card. Can certainly hit 4K on older titles, and output 4K with upscaling.
Don't expect miracles from it. It's PS5 level hardware. But that's good enough for most of us.
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I get your point, but since people claim Steam is a monopoly, then by that logic they have a large swath of data on what counts as a gaming machine to the user base.
I get its not going to compete with a watercooled watt sucker, but that doesn't seem to be the majority.
As a person that has gamed since 1983: Up until recently I was gaming on a 2013 dell mobo converted to a Core V21 case (that's a lot of rewiring conversion --thanks dell), and using a CAD GPU.
Then work bought us new laptops with RTX cards. So graphics have improved for me.
Both of those are not hardcore gaming PCs, and this steam machine will probably outperform them.
My point being these were valid systems for gaming by a gamer. Not everyone needs an F1 car to enjoy the ride to work😀
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Agreed, the best selling dedicated gaming system of the last few years is the Switch, which has less power than many phones.
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It’s PS5 level hardware that is still gonna have lower performance than a PS5 because it has too little VRAM, but hopefully we get PS5 level optimization for the hardware and for linux if it’s successful enough.
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12GB seems to be the sweet spot for VRAM, but I suspect the real issue is PC devs not really giving a fuck how hit runs on less than their dev kit.
But then a lot of PC gamers seem to think a game should always run at ultra, no matter how good their rig is.
And I will die on this hill: raytracing has been a colossal waste of everybody's time and money.
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Why use the word "claims"? They have the Valve Hardware survey to prove the statement.
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"Outperforms 70% of Gaming PCs" is the sort of statistic you'd only quote if you thought it sounded more impressive than it actually was, and it already doesn't sound impressive.
(edit: genuinely surprised how controversial a statement that turned out to be?)
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It doesn't read to me like they think it's impressive. It reads to me like they they are clarifying their market.
A challenge will be how many laptop PC users who game on it because that's all they have/can afford can be converted into steam machine buyers.
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Well, if you are adding my 15yo Core2Quad in the percentage, of course those numbers come easy.
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70% is not so hard to beat.
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E8400 for the win! Q6600 is soo out!
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There's also a Q8400 btw.
That's what is lying around now the the motherboard is not working.
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So the engineer state that it can run 'all games of the market'. Okay, cool, but at what kind of settings?
Like, it undermines the expectations of what one has when it comes to approaching the idea of having a PC to run games they want to see run flawlessly. I have been there before where I was not satisfied running games at Medium, hell, I wasn't satisfied when I ran some games at even High. My targeted goal of building a machine, is if it can run at least 90% of games that I throw at it, with optimum performance. Suffice to say, I think I've achieved that.
If someone gets a Steam Machine and find that it cannot run that particular game someone buys the Steam Machine for at their preference, you're going to see refunds flying around.
The Steam Machine development should've never went in with the concept of "just run games", they should've went in with the concept of "run games and run them well".
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I mean the Steam deck can't max out most games, and it's been wildly successful.
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I have some of the same concerns with the Frame. It is a stabdalone headset, but also just runs Steam games; it's not its own ecosystem like a Quest which has different versions for the headset vs what you stream from PC. But I haven't seen much hands-on stuff other than a physical hardware breakdown; never anything running on it.
Like, how well would it run Half-Life Alyx vs how well it might run something like Gorn? How is it gonna handle informing users what games would actually run well in standalone vs PCVR streaming?
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They are expanding their "steam deck verified" system to cover the Steam Machine and Steam Frame. I have to assume that they will attempt to make that distinction, because I agree, there should be a Steam Frame Platinum (for streaming) and Steam Frame Silver (for on device) or something.
I do hope they take this into account.
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They should just sell at a loss the steam games bought will make up for it. Every consol does that, why not this mini pc.
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Because since it's unlocked hardware, corporations would buy them all as workstations, and they'd never buy any games. At the end of the day, corporations ruin everything.
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That's just waiting corporate and other entity buying powerful PC for cheap. And Valve won't get any game sales from it.
Just like PS3 being used as supercomputer.
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Every console does that and it's kinda anti-competitive behavior isn't it?
Definitely makes it harder for new companies to release enticing hardware, so i'd say so...
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That doesn't make any sense to me.
Lets waste so much manpower, hours of labor, years of development and vice versa so that we can potentially taint the goodwill of fans by taking loss after loss and relying on them buying games they'll never play on Steam.
Consoles are a bit more careful than this.
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8 GB of VRAM and 16 GB of RAM … those are the specs of my almost 15 years old legacy machine. I doubt that the Steam Machine outperforms anything made in the last 5-10 years.
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Which might just be 70% of gaming rigs. Steam would know best.
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Steam would know best.
indeed!
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
seems like 16 GB ram and 8 GB vram is the most popular setup.
Also, wasn't the ram upgradeable in the gabecube?
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These figures just haven‘t gone up all that much over the last decade. Sure, you can get 128GB of RAM and 24GB of VRAM if you‘re willing to pay for it. But if you don‘t want to spend upwards of $5000 for your PC and you‘re maybe not that experienced, you might just look for a gaming rig from a vendor you‘ve heard of before and get 16GB RAM and 8GB VRAM even in 2025 with current-gen hardware.
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I agree, I think it's all about affordability and ease of use. If they can sell them for a nice price (somewhere around the price of a PS5 pro) and they're easy to use I don't see a reason why they wouldn't sell. Hell, I might even buy one myself. I have a very old gaming pc (close to 10 years old now) and even though I've replaced some parts over the years (ram, GPU, storage), the core of it is still very outdated and it might almost be cheaper to switch to something like this then to upgrade my existing pc.
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I'm always amazed how much you get taxed for prebuilts. This thing is at least $1k more than what I spent (with a similar config), and the CPU is still worse than the one I got lol.
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This is the moment where you realize that you are either uncommonly wealthy, or spend significantly more of your money on gaming pcs than most people do.
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I doubt that the Steam Machine outperforms anything made in the last 5-10 years.
It's all about the price... and the very recent years weren't exactly kind in relation for price per performance
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Many modern games can run on a 780m integrated AMD GPU(APU) with FSR and other bells and whistles enabled. One can run some games on a em680 - a palm-sized PC with underpowered 680m GPU. It is not gonna be 4k@60 of course. Could probably be 1080p@30 depending on release year, requirements and settings. But that is a super tiny computer with a built-in GPU that has more power over your typical GPU from 2015!
Now, Steam Machine is going to have a dedicated GPU that is around as powerful as 7600. With FMF and FSR it could probabaly do many games from 2020 to today at 4k@60. Hardware is not as bad as many think here. There are not so many games that require more than 8gb of VRAM. Maybe they also design SteamOS to work better with custom PCs that are more powerful than Steam Machines. Who knows? But so far, hardware is not so outdated and will be sufficient for a few years.
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Must be nice to have such awesome 15yo machine, as my 6yo still have only 4gb vram (1650s).
If You had enough coins to buy top top tier 2010 rig with 8gb vram back then, You surely had much to upgrade it in 2015, 2020, and also did nice 5090 upgrade this year too! Who cares single 5090rtx do cost 4-6x than whole Gabecube is expected to cost.
Having industry market is awesome, You can find something ultra powered for Yourself, and I can do find some budget for myself too.
Ngl, I'm slightly jealous You're in the top 30%, even top of the top of it these 30%, that article is NOT about.
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Yeah, I admit, it was quite expensive. I never updated one single bit of it, except switching to a 1080 one or two years after buying it, though.
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Do you think RAM is the only thing that factors into performance?...
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itt gamers act like anything that doesn't do ray tracing is literally a commodore 64.
yall got some spoiled child ass ideas about hardware longevity, im over here on a 3gb 960 running most things just fine on lowered settings.
I remember playing a game, I think it was either Spiderman or Control with Ray Tracing on and I was like "wow, these are amazing!" Then I realized I didn't actually turn it on. My dumb ass can't tell the difference.
Exactly. One of the benefits of patient gaming (shoutout to !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works) is I don’t need top of the line hardware to enjoy my hobby. I’m sure the GabeCube will run multi-year old games very well.
Between working >40 hours a week and raising a kid I only really care if the game I spent 2 hours a week on is going to run and look good enough. If I have to play on high instead of ultra I’m not gonna have a meltdown.
People in this thread may be hardcore and spend a lot on their game consoles, but Valve's statement is probably accurate, they've got the most data on computer hardware usage.
I’m still chugging along with a 1070 Ti. Then again, I don’t play many top-of-the-line AAA titles these days. For example, I know Doom Eternal and Dark Ages won’t run on this card unless I mess around with tweaking ini files or something, but I wouldn’t bother.
not to mention the joy of emulation, which older hardware does very well these days
While people are a bit over the top. A 960 is a decade old and 3gigs literally wouldn't be able to turn on with a large number of games released this year even on the lowest settings.
It's objectively out of date. Hell lanythjng ess then 6 gigs frequently crashes or flat out refuses for the most part.
Your literal hard cut off is basically this year with unreal 5. Ue4 games, most proprietary engines like decima, frostbyte or dandelion all will do fine at 3gigs of vram. But they are last targeting last gen consoles as their low end. So your low end is looking back around 6-8 years.
2025 has been almost exclusively full of games that are finally dropping support entirely for that standard and the new standard is 6-8 gigs of vram minimums and 16-24 gigs of available ram not counting system utilization.
Going forward if you don't have a 6gig card and 16 gigs of ram. You functionally don't have a computer that can do new high end games. And fuck that's not even a hard ask. We NEED to move the fuck on from 3gig cards and 8gigs of ram.
Hell a few games are even pushing for 8gig vram/20gig ram as the minimum. But I doubt that's going to catch on.
Iv also come across a few Chinese games that flat out won't install if you have a spinning hard drive in your system at all full stop. Not that you can't install to one, it flat out won't let you install it to any drive.
At some point we do need to just move the fuck on and accept hardware is out of date. And a full ten fucking years. Is a pretty damn good arbitrary line. Gaming is a very specific work load and it's getting noticeable how problematic it is in multiplayer games between having allies with shit computers and good ones.
Having 10+ min wait times after your queue cause a random is working off a low end PC and a spinning drive to start a dungeon in an mmo. Is fucked.
Do you blame them? So many games these days force ray tracing. If your card can’t do that very well, then that game runs like crap.
What games? the overpriced crap pushed by big companies, that massively fails on using UE5, that do look worse than 10yo games with worse performance? Sure popular, but I'd be happy when they fails.
Fuck ea, ubi, actiblizz and all their copy-paste year to year shit!
Please do tell which games force ray tracing?
Some modern games look like absolute dirty brown water trash when you lower the settings a ton
That's HROT on max settings and it's fucking amazing!
granted but i feel like the expectation there ought to be on the dev to not rely on resource intensive post processing gimmicks to make their game not look like trash
When I was a child and first saw a 3d game, I imagined the lighting to be done by ray-tracing (without the actual name of it, of course).
Until then, I only knew 2d games with no lighting mechanics and just a bunch of pixels for sprites.
True. But it doesn't change the fact that it is still quite crap for a brand new gaming pc/console
Depends on the price point. Obviously, it's not going to be competitive with a $2K gaming rig. But if the price is right, I might get GabeCubes for my kiddos as their first "desktop" computers. They should run CachyOS flawlessly, since it's also Arch based, so it will work great as a desktop computer and a gaming rig.
My midrange computer from 3 years ago should outperform it, I would hope. If not, then it'll be priced out from what I'd consider buying.