If its "steam hardware" like the Steam Deck then pre-compiled shaders are downloaded (regularly) so there's no need to compile locally. I'd imagine the same thing will be true for the Steam Machine.
*** Valve Steam Machine ***
- Thread starter kakarott
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If its "steam hardware" like the Steam Deck then pre-compiled shaders are downloaded (regularly) so there's no need to compile locally. I'd imagine the same thing will be true for the Steam Machine.
True - there could be a difference between officially supported hardware and non-Valve AMD PCs as well. Not sure.
Well nobody is precompiling the shaders for non-Valve machines because they don't know what they are in terms of hardware. That in conjunction with regular proton updates (which usually seem to trigger new shader downloads on the deck) could make life a bit tedious for certain games.
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Yep I know, only the SD, SM and those few officially supported Legion Go's etc. get the precompiled shaders. I worded my response poorly like Christian Bale's Batman
Early Steam Machine user mourns "red line of death" following GPU failure
"Pretty cool for the 20 minutes that it worked".
www.digitalfoundry.net
Soldato
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Got my email to order my 2tb with controller and not sure what to do. On the one side I can afford it and love shiny new tech. On the other side I already have a gaming PC in the office (5800x3D with 4090) and Xbox Series X in the living room, plus a Steam Deck OLED. I don't "need" it, but tempted to grab it for a bit and then sell it on, prob get most of my money back. Thoughts?
If you're having to ask strangers, you can't be all that sold on the device. It's an easy pass for me ; high cost / low performance.
Soldato
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The thing is, it's not really shiny new tech. It's old tech in a small form factor. If you already have a Steam Deck then you will already be used to SteamOS so it won't be anything new to you. You already have a powerful PC so PC gaming isn't new to you. Do you really want or need the ability to have a compact box to play those games on your TV?
Personally if I was going to spend over a grand on old hardware, I would buy a Retrotink 4K or a really nice PVM CRT and the rest of the money buying loads of retro consoles and games. Not exactly comparing apples to apples but that would be a way more exciting use of the money to me.
Lucky, I'm hammering F5 for mine....
If you can afford it there's more or less nothing to lose in the sense you'll probably get most your money back out of the hype train (seeing it a bit like the analogue 64 on that front), it's more down to if you think you'd get some good use out of it or if your buying it because it's new and the thing people are talking about
I have cancelled mine seeing reviews and other peoples opinions it’s just not worth it really. Other than being a small box it is woefully underpowered and building something far better for similar price is a better option or spending a little bit more gets you considerably better. As Steam OS is free you can put it on anything you build and have a much better experience.
Mine is getting shipped today.
I sold the Steam Deck (and got my money back after 3+ years of use, insanity!) so the top-end Steam Machine without controller is costing me about £750. I have other controllers and bluetooth keyboard/touchpad & I didn't get on with the original anyway. Deck spent most of its life plugged into a monitor/dock.
I can live with that cost given a 2TB Gen4 SSD is £200+ these days. Also I have a couple of 8GB DDR5-5600 SODIMMS in a gaming lappie I hardly use (noisy) so if I can be arsed to take the SM apart I could swap them for the single 16GB SODIMM it ships with.
It'll be fine for my use & anything it can't handle can be streamed to it from the machine upstairs. Also I can use the desktop mode and start getting rid of some of the other boxes (Roku etc) - assuming I don't get wife aggro in the process.
We'll see. I have no doubt (after selling the deck) that if the SM is a pile of junk, someone will buy it for the same price I paid.
I sold the Steam Deck (and got my money back after 3+ years of use, insanity!) so the top-end Steam Machine without controller is costing me about £750. I have other controllers and bluetooth keyboard/touchpad & I didn't get on with the original anyway. Deck spent most of its life plugged into a monitor/dock.
I can live with that cost given a 2TB Gen4 SSD is £200+ these days. Also I have a couple of 8GB DDR5-5600 SODIMMS in a gaming lappie I hardly use (noisy) so if I can be arsed to take the SM apart I could swap them for the single 16GB SODIMM it ships with.
It'll be fine for my use & anything it can't handle can be streamed to it from the machine upstairs. Also I can use the desktop mode and start getting rid of some of the other boxes (Roku etc) - assuming I don't get wife aggro in the process.
We'll see. I have no doubt (after selling the deck) that if the SM is a pile of junk, someone will buy it for the same price I paid.
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Sound like you've done really well and it is crazy just how much certain tech is appreciating. That's one of the best things about selling the PS5 Pro; yesterday boxing it all up I get to remove a 2TB NVMe Gen4 drive, which as you say are so much now. And I could do with the extra storage in one of my PCs.
Although in this heat any tech is melting. Such a bad time to be using tech, or trying to reinstall OSes etc.
Likewise. I also have not so fond memories of having to take the case off mine in the 2003 "heatwave" (seems trivial now, 34C) and even then SMD components fell off the back of an ATI AIW card while playing Eve Online. Still worked after the inevitable reboot so probably just decoupling caps.
I bought a lot of stuff last October/November when prices were stupid but not insane. Wife bought a HP 32GB laptop (her own company) for about £1100 because I told her prices were going insane - same lappie isn't available in that config (32GB) now, just 16GB but about the same price. Nobody tell me about HP please, she's dealt with them for years and had no problems - including warranty claims.
For me the PS ecosystem isn't anything I have an investment in. Ditto XBox.
That leaves PC and frankly Windows just ****** me off in every way imaginable now - like having to use Applocker to prevent MS installing their AI models every time they "deprecate" group policies. At this point any sane person is going to think "wtf am I spending so much of my time stopping the OS doing things I've told it not to?"
With a couple of exceptions (f/w stuff) I had a great experience with SteamOS on the deck. I'm sure a large part of that is Valve targeting the platform with proton updates & that seems to be the case for the SM.
I'm hoping its quiet, cool and works OK for 1440p. FSR4 in experimental Proton may make that work at 2160p but I doubt it on demanding titles. Edit - seems to do reasonably well on the latest DF review with FSR4 performance mode.
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Steam OS is fantastic. And with this being an official machine it'll be supported and you won't have to worry about things like shaders. My latest challenge with my Steam OS box is Borderlands 2 downloading 3.4GB update everytime you power the PC on. It seems to be a bug that has basically existed for years, but not properly worked on despite the recent Steam OS 3.8 hotfix for BL2.
I've just made the switch to Linux this year on my main PCs (only one laptop with Windows 11 in the house now) and I'm so glad to be free of Microsoft's OS. So in that sense I share your frustrations of Windows. I have had issue with the new AM5 PC on Linux though (amdgpu crashes) so it isn't all easy, but I'll hopefully solve those at some point.
I personally think the best thing about what Valve are doing with Proton, Gamescope, KDE etc. is making all of this development open-source and sharing it with the community. It means by design it all trickles down into the wider Linux community.
Windows11 simply isn't an OS suited to running games in the best way. The annoyances come separately and frequently - every second Tuesday of the month.
What would be nice is if NVidia released proper drivers (not the blob) for Linux. They could recognise that they (NVidia) couldn't care less about gamers and perhaps stop worrying about people running workloads (AI) they "shouldn't" on consumer cards. If ever a company needed to stop "nickle & diming" its NVidia.
Valve aren't angels. They are essentially another middleman/gateway who take their percentage. They had the foresight to work out that games were no longer limited to a "platform/OS" a long time ago & they deserve credit for that but it was paid for by gamers/game companies rather than Valve shareholders.
What would be nice is if NVidia released proper drivers (not the blob) for Linux. They could recognise that they (NVidia) couldn't care less about gamers and perhaps stop worrying about people running workloads (AI) they "shouldn't" on consumer cards. If ever a company needed to stop "nickle & diming" its NVidia.
Valve aren't angels. They are essentially another middleman/gateway who take their percentage. They had the foresight to work out that games were no longer limited to a "platform/OS" a long time ago & they deserve credit for that but it was paid for by gamers/game companies rather than Valve shareholders.
My last dedicated Nvidia GPU was the 1080, back in 2017. Partly timing, partly not wanting to fund Nvidia and also Linux support. And indeed Valve aren't perfect far from it. But I trust them more than Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft Probably in that order.