*** Valve Steam Machine ***

malachi said:
The Average Joe wouldnt notice or the Benchmark people ?

Thats the real question.
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15.3% slower in Baldur's gate 3, 14.7% slower in The Outer Worlds 2, 10% slower in Resident Evil 4.

Also worth noting that Valve have left open the option to include two sticks of RAM for future Steam Machine production so those buying one now are possibly getting an inferior machine.
 
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lovelyhead said:
15.3% slower in Baldur's gate 3, 14.7% slower in The Outer Worlds 2, 10% slower in Resident Evil 4.

Also worth noting that Valve have left open the option to include two sticks of RAM for future Steam Machine production so those buying one now are possibly getting an inferior machine.
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Issue with percentages is most people wont notice a difference between 300fps and 255fps but they would between 30fps and 25.5fps.
 
As you'll mostly be limited by the rubbish GPU it does not matter as on a big screen you will run higher quality so it does not look rubbish which limits performance, anyone buying this is not going to know any better and those that know better don't buy this!
 
It also seems like getting a match for the already included 16GB DDR5 is very difficult. So people thinking they will just buy another stick of RAM will be out of luck.
 
Amazing, as if getting an overpriced underpowered novelty wasn't enough to satisfy some peoples overwhelming desire to tip their money down the drain, now we're talking about wanting to swap RAM sticks in and out just to make sure the performance isn't even worse than originally expected before they're even shipping.
 
Kenai said:
Amazing, as if getting an overpriced underpowered novelty wasn't enough to satisfy some peoples overwhelming desire to tip their money down the drain, now we're talking about wanting to swap RAM sticks in and out just to make sure the performance isn't even worse than originally expected before they're even shipping.
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I bet many people will quickly find that the storage on their 512GB Steam Machine is insufficient so will end up spending even more on it.
 
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Think it's wild that people are just accepting the price.

There's been plenty of YouTubers milking the steam machine killer videos and it's very simple to trash the steam machine while keeping to a small mini itx case. Sure not a 6x6 cube but can get something the same size of a playstation 5 (or something like the fractal terra still small) easily and way out perform it with actual upgrade possibilities.

Sure there's some nice to.haves but it's mad people are okay buying very old hardware that is already obsolete for so much. In 1-2 years it isn't going to be pretty.
 
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MatsyLR said:
Think it's wild that people are just accepting the price.
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I don't think many people care. Yes the price is shocking but what was people expecting !?!? Unless they have been living under a rock over the last 10 months.

Either you buy it or don't. Yes, there are alternatives but nobody is going for that otherwise they would have already. You can't escape the high price tag for any hardware.
 
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MatsyLR said:
Think it's wild that people are just accepting the price.

There's been plenty of YouTubers milking the steam machine killer videos and it's very simple to trash the steam machine while keeping to a small mini itx case. Sure not a 6x6 cube but can get something the same size of a playstation 5 (or something like the fractal terra still small) easily and way out perform it with actual upgrade possibilities.

Sure there's some nice to.haves but it's mad people are okay buying very old hardware that is already obsolete for so much. In 1-2 years it isn't going to be pretty.
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I have a Fractal Terra build at the desk in my front room. Built 2 1/2 years ago, 7800X3D, 32gb 6000Mhz cl30, 2tb NVME, 4070SFE. Despite its age it is still way quicker. The Steam Machine form factor and size is still tempting though not at the current price point. I am thinking of building a BC-250 Steam Machine just for the lols.
 
I got my controller today and I'm a little disappointed with the placement of the controls. Its comfortable to hold, although feels a little cheap with the rough plastic. I was worried the analogue sticks would be a stretch to use, but I have fairly large hands and they are fine. I do think they'd be better if they had domed tops on them though. The main issue is that the D pad and buttons are too close to the sticks, so I end up hitting the sticks with my thumbs when using the right D pad and X button. I don't understand how they could spend years working on it and make such a big oversight.

I have a feeling the buttons on the grips will be an issue as I notice I end up pressing the lower button when stretching to use the L1 and R1 shoulder buttons. Hopefully I can disable the button, so it won't be an issue.

I'll have to give it a proper test in a few games before fully making my mind up. I'm thinking the track pads will be very handy for a few games I play on the TV.
 
Yoko said:
I have a Fractal Terra build at the desk in my front room. Built 2 1/2 years ago, 7800X3D, 32gb 6000Mhz cl30, 2tb NVME, 4070SFE. Despite its age it is still way quicker. The Steam Machine form factor and size is still tempting though not at the current price point. I am thinking of building a BC-250 Steam Machine just for the lols.
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Thanks for this! You've reminded me of my time with SFF (shuttle cases) a decade or so ago and the fun I had building those. I just looked at the Fractal Terra case and it looks very sleek, which prompted me to do a bit more research and find the FormD T1. I think once SteamOS beds in, and with Sony's latest expulsions, I may move towards an SFF AMD option for my lounge gaming.
 
Amusing that retailers have seen sff builds perk up since the steam machine launch.

If it's truly people feeling the urge to make a steam machine then that would mean more attention to intel/amd hardware.

Anyway it's all been set out, product and bait, hopefully Valve will share the results of how many people are using SteamOS after a while.
 
darkgen said:
Thanks for this! You've reminded me of my time with SFF (shuttle cases) a decade or so ago and the fun I had building those. I just looked at the Fractal Terra case and it looks very sleek, which prompted me to do a bit more research and find the FormD T1. I think once SteamOS beds in, and with Sony's latest expulsions, I may move towards an SFF AMD option for my lounge gaming.
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This is probably my direction of travel too. Both Xbox and Sony keep standing on rakes, and the Steam Machine is overpriced / underpowered. Tempted to jump in soon before the cost of components increases further.
 
Hotwired said:
Amusing that retailers have seen sff builds perk up since the steam machine launch.

If it's truly people feeling the urge to make a steam machine then that would mean more attention to intel/amd hardware.

Anyway it's all been set out, product and bait, hopefully Valve will share the results of how many people are using SteamOS after a while.
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Makes to be honest, I think plenty of people (myself included) were holding off on building anything to see how this would finally materialise in terms of price.
 
Grim5 said:
Former PlayStation boss impressions
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There's some really astute impression in there I think. Certainly things I'd agree with having used Steam OS quiet a bit - i.e. Valve's OS is brilliant and I think is better than the Xbox OS in many ways. But the comments around the slow loading of games - I think I get it.

I've been running some comparison between Borderlands 2 (Handsome Collection on PS4) via PS5 Pro vs. my Steam OS box and Steam is slow in comparison. Some games really fly when starting up on PS5. And whilst Borderlands 2 is faster to load between areas; 1-2 second on PC vs. 5-6 seconds on PS5 (via a USB-C external drive) the first time load is much quicker on PS5. One particular annoyance seems to be compiling shaders on Steam OS. If you just sneeze it wants to repeat this step. And indeed I may have a bug here, but even without that you're looking at the small Borderlands 2 box for longer than you should be. Also Borderlands 2 does require some set-up on Steam OS which just isn't there on PS5 (re-labelling the launcher, and setting the max res in options to 4K to get around the 1080p limit). Again this is an old game written in an era of spinning HDDs and not had any optimisation work from the publisher on either platform, but is a random example I've spent time with.

In other games like Brotato Steam OS works beautifully and the loading is superfast (don't have this on PS5 but imagine it's similar).

At a guess it's probably just the emulation layer of Proton vs. running on bare metal of PS5 that is likely this 'slower' loading time.
 
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