Steam Machine

[Fezzik]

Steam Machine

Your games on the big screen

store.steampowered.com

Steam Machine Hands-On: First Impressions of Valve’s New Console-Like Gaming PC - IGN

Valve’s newest hardware aims to further bridge the gap between gaming PCs and consoles.

www.ign.com

Our first look at the Steam Machine, Valve’s ambitious new game console

Valve’s Fremont was real.

www.theverge.com

Steam Machine preview: a powerful, customisable mini PC for couch gaming

The Steam Machine looks promising, with some unique TV-focused features, powerful discrete graphics and thoughtful customisation options. Here's the EG preview.

www.eurogamer.net

As someone looking to get into PC gaming but not wanting a handheld or anything Windows, this seems ideal.

 

[TypeRDC5]

Love my Steam Deck.

Will definately keep an eye on this after release.

 

[Joey D]

This will be perfect for my living room. My wife and I enjoy playing couch co-op games, and there are way more available on Steam than there are on Xbox. As long as it's not some stupid price, I'll likely get one. My guess is that it will be $499 or $599.

 

[MagpieRacer]

Ok, well, it's not Half Life 3 which I was hoping this Steam marketing gap would be, however.

This looks fantastic, I have a gaming laptop, which isn't very powerful, does a decent job on most things but obviously cooling is an issue and without a deal it's not always the most comfortable. Plus now owning a wheel rig, not practical on a laptop.

If this thing runs the whole steam library and supports racing wheels etc, then I'm very much interested. Price will obviously be the biggest factor as to whether I can consider this a genuine option alongside my PS5. But the prospect of being able to play, AMS2, LMU, AC Evo, AC Rally, is very very interesting.

Also, does iRacing work with steam deck? Is there a chance iRacing would work on this system given you can access it via Steam?

 

[Fezzik]

You’d probably need to install Windows on it for iRacing and other games with anti-cheat.

 

[Veinz]

This is the final nail in the Xbox’s coffin.

 

[sesselpupser]

As someone who has exclusively gamed on a Deck since May 2022, has a wireless SteamVR headset but no space for the desktop PC in the living room nor power sockets near where the base stations would need to go and a 2017 PC that is ineligible for Windows 11, this new hardware is almost tailor made just for me.

If only I could afford to buy it!

Also, does iRacing work with steam deck?

Not exactly, it's difficult to make it work and when it does it sounds like you can only race offline with bots.

 

[Aphelion]

ooooh, depending on the price, this could be a guaranteed purchase for me. I have no interest in spending 3 grand on a PC, and generally much prefer the more plug-n-play style of consoles anyway, but there are quite a few games in my steam library that I have nothing to run on

 

[Nexus]

I love the idea, but those specs aren't great - 8GB VRAM is questionable for 1440P, let alone 4K. I'd also imagine next gen consoles aren't too far away, so it might be a tough sell.

If it's priced aggressively, I could see myself using this to stream games from my desktop to my TV. I've been considering getting a Series S and using Sunshine/Moonlight, but this might be less fiddly (with the advantage of running less intensive games directly).

 

[KAlex122]

Budget VR Simracing device?

 

[Aphelion]

I love the idea, but those specs aren't great - 8GB VRAM is questionable for 1440P, let alone 4K. I'd also imagine next gen consoles aren't too far away, so it might be a tough sell.

If it's priced aggressively, I could see myself using this to stream games from my desktop to my TV. I've been considering getting a Series S and using Sunshine/Moonlight, but this might be less fiddly (with the advantage of running less intensive games directly).

Maybe im crazy, but the relatively weak specs makes me hope its priced very aggressively. If it’s a couple hundred bucks less than the current gen consoles it could definitely be worth it, and thats the only way I see valve going. If its the same price as a PS5 with those specs surely it wouldn't sell much…

 

[Fezzik]

Maybe im crazy, but the relatively weak specs makes me hope its priced very aggressively. If it’s a couple hundred bucks less than the current gen consoles it could definitely be worth it, and thats the only way I see valve going. If its the same price as a PS5 with those specs surely it wouldn't sell much…

I don’t see it undercutting the PS5 by that much, if at all. £430-£480 in the UK currently for the Slim, below that is where the base Steam Deck sits and this is more powerful. They called the Machine an entry-level PC and I expect that sort of pricing.

 

[NLxAROSA]

Someone on Dutch site Tweakers.net did a napkin calculation regarding the performance:

(Translated from Dutch)

"The GPU should deliver 6x the performance of a Steam Deck. A Steam Deck does ~1,638 FP32 TFLOPs of RDNA 2.0.

6 times 1,638 equals 9,828 TFLOPs. Of course, there are also other RDNA 2.0 consoles on the market: the PS5 and the Xbox Series. Because they all use the same architecture, you can compare the TFLOPs (which equates to (clock speed × shading units × 2)/1,000,000) fairly well. However, some games prefer more cores, while others perform better with higher clocks.

Xbox Series S: 4.01 TFLOPs
Xbox Series X: 12.15 TFLOPs
PS5: 10.29 TFLOPs
PS5 Pro: 18.05 TFLOPs
Steam Deck: 1.64 TFLOPs
Steam Machine 2026: 6x Steam Deck
The hardware will use RDNA 3.0. Clock for clock, RDNA 3.0 performs about 8% better than RDNA 2.0. So if it were exactly 6x the GPU performance of a Steam Deck, it would amount to about 18.2 TFLOPs of RDNA 3.0 (9.1 × 2 because, starting with RDNA 30, AMD is doing the same trick as Nvidia; integer shaders can theoretically be used for floating point).

We know the clock speed will be 2.450 MHz, so we can calculate the system's shading units based on the calculated TFLOPs (taking this with a grain of salt).

9.1 × 1,000,000 / 2 / 2450 = 1857. This isn't a common number, of course. The closest estimate is 1792. AMD always increments 256 times, so it will either be an RDNA 3.0 GPU with 1792 shading units or 2048.

If it's 1792 units, it amounts to 17.56 TFLOPs (RDNA 3.0); if it's 2048, it's 20.07 TFLOPs. RDNA 3.0’s performance at 20.07 TFLOPS puts it on par with the relative floating point performance of an RX 7600M XT, GTX 1080 Ti, RTX 3060 12GB, and Arc A770. At 17.56 TFLOPs, performance is comparable to an RX 7600M, RX 6600, RTX 2060 Super, and Arc A560."


And Digital Foundry:

 

[EngieDiesel]

Budget VR Simracing device?

They're also making the Steam Frame, which can pair with this (and all the other Steam hardware coming out), doesn't need external sensor hardware and potentially has enough hardware power that it could run games standalone without needing to stream from the machine, so... yeah, VR could probably be an actual viable thing for mainstream gaming now.

 

[sesselpupser]

If its the same price as a PS5 with those specs surely it wouldn't sell much…

I think there is a market for it, just not a huge one, same as the Deck. I expect there are enough people with big enough Steam libraries to make console ownership uninteresting, who also don't want to use Windows anymore, but also want better performance than the Deck offers on its own.

Personally I'm completely sold on this concept (the entire hardware ecosystem of Deck, Frame and GabeCube) and while I'm pretty sure it was obvious I saw this coming years ago, as in Valve using the Deck's unique selling points - a handheld PC with performance better than expected running a really nice, viable alternative to Windows - as a Trojan horse to sell people on SteamOS, not the hardware, so that they could then come out with a traditional console-like device and steal market share from Windows. Adoption is low, Linux only just reached 3% share in the Steam survey, but 3% is a lot more than 0%.

 

[Fezzik]

Hands-On with Steam Machine: Valve's New PC/Console Hybrid

An irresistible form-factor, but what about performance?

www.digitalfoundry.net

Interestingly, Valve's philosophy about Steam Machine's specs boils down to their use of the Steam Hardware Survey as a guideline. "We picked a point where for most people on Steam, this would be actually an upgrade," one Valve engineer said.

I think this is the key point regarding the "underwhelming" specs - it's designed for people who probably don't care at all (like me), not for those with existing gaming PCs who talk about and understand tflops, rdna and shading units.

If it plays the likes of Stardew, Balatro, Vampire Survivors, etc (ie the most played games on Deck) decently on a TV or large monitor then that's all that matters, and depending on pricing it'll do pretty well.

 

[EngieDiesel]

I think there is a market for it, just not a huge one, same as the Deck. I expect there are enough people with big enough Steam libraries to make console ownership uninteresting, who also don't want to use Windows anymore, but also want better performance than the Deck offers on its own.

You also have to keep in mind that with GPU makers chasing the AI dragon and pricing their cards more and more out of reach, on top of possibly having to replace the entire computer just for Windows 11, and generally just how crap the economy is currently with a good chance of it getting worse, there's an increasingly growing section of people who have a very large Steam library but also can't or won't make an investment that large right now to try and stay on top of it all, and also don't want have to re-buy a large chunk of their library on a Playstation because both those options will cost at least a thousand bucks if not more.

This is coming in at just the right time to take advantage of that, even if it's somewhat lower-mid range. It's not going to appeal to people with 400 FPS gamer eyes or who obsess over 3DMark bench scores, but if the graphics hit isn't too severe and It Just Works, there's a pretty large potential buyer base for it.

 

[Nexus]

Hands-On with Steam Machine: Valve's New PC/Console Hybrid

An irresistible form-factor, but what about performance?

www.digitalfoundry.net

I think this is the key point regarding the "underwhelming" specs - it's designed for people who probably don't care at all (like me), not for those with existing gaming PCs who talk about and understand tflops, rdna and shading units.

If it plays the likes of Stardew, Balatro, Vampire Survivors, etc (ie the most played games on Deck) decently on a TV or large monitor then that's all that matters, and depending on pricing it'll do pretty well.

The Steam Hardware Survey says that the most popular resolution is 1080P, and most people have 8GB of VRAM - if I were spending this much on a gaming device, I'd want it to handle more than those titles in 4K.

The survey may also be skewed by the fact that the most played Steam games are relatively easy to run (CS and DOTA 2) - I'd wager that a decent percentage of those players don't have/feel the need for a powerful PC.

IMO the current specs of the Steam Machine are a weird in-between - overkill for popular Steam Deck titles, but not nearly powerful enough for anything else (at 4K, at least). FSR upscaling will need to do some heavy lifting, and I'm not sure going with an older architecture (RDNA 3) was a wise choice, considering it doesn't have FSR 4 (for now, at least).

 

[Mr Grumpy]

I think they missed the boat not dropping this before Xmas because it could've potentially landed under a lot of Xmas trees.

I'm unsure of the specs myself as I've been out of the PC spec race for so long now, as I understand it it sits slightly below a SX/PS5.

If reasonably priced this could interest me due to all the old Sim racing titles I own & I can finally buy AMS2, however what is it going to look like at 1080p on a 55" - 65" tv?

I think they could've upped the specs slightly & I find the storage options a bit odd, I mean why 512gb & 2tb it's such an odd jump why not 1tb & 2tb?

As someone currently looking for a reasonable gaming laptop/gaming pc even a hybrid/mini/nuc type solution to my Sim racing needs I'll keep an eye on it.

 

[NLxAROSA]

if I were spending this much on a gaming device

There's no price info available yet, so what amount did you have in mind with 'this much'? Because the price point is indeed super important here. I assume they'll launch it a fair amount below current console prices. Something like 399 USD/EUR maybe (no idea, just guessing)?

At the same time, I would not be looking at the hardware price ALONE. Online play does not come free with PS5/Xbox, prices for subscriptions are going up and games are much more expensive on consoles too. Last, but not least, in the DF vid it was said that Valve is aiming for a Steam Machine ecosystem, and the same for Steam Deck, so SteamOS on third party devices, with potentially different/more powerful hardware.

BTW, I would love to see an ecosystem and Valve/SteamOS toppling over Windows, finally putting the nail in its coffin.

 

[EngieDiesel]

I think they missed the boat not dropping this before Xmas because it could've potentially landed under a lot of Xmas trees.

Valve doesn't need to rush it out for the holidays though as they're not really competing with anyone like the console makers are (and honestly they're not really competing with each other much anymore either, mostly trying to milk their existing userbases). Plus a botched launch will kill these off very quickly, so there's really no point in releasing it before it's well and truly ready.

I think they could've upped the specs slightly & I find the storage options a bit odd, I mean why 512gb & 2tb it's such an odd jump why not 1tb & 2tb?

512 is much cheaper and abundant cause of weird manufacturing processes I don't fully understand, and MicroSD expandable storage is really good enough now. Pre-Switch that would have been a very questionable choice, but the format has advanced to the point where it's fine to just let people expand as they need to and keep the hardware's price point down to make it more attractive.

 

[NLxAROSA]

MicroSD expandable storage is really good enough now.

One of the reasons to include expandable storage cards (according to the DF vid) is that you can swap installed game between Steam Machine, Steam Deck and Steam Frame seamlessly.

 

[MagpieRacer]

There's no price info available yet, so what amount did you have in mind with 'this much'? Because the price point is indeed super important here. I assume they'll launch it a fair amount below current console prices. Something like 399 USD/EUR maybe (no idea, just guessing)?

At the same time, I would not be looking at the hardware price ALONE. Online play does not come free with PS5/Xbox, prices for subscriptions are going up and games are much more expensive on consoles too. Last, but not least, in the DF vid it was said that Valve is aiming for a Steam Machine ecosystem, and the same for Steam Deck, so SteamOS on third party devices, with potentially different/more powerful hardware.

BTW, I would love to see an ecosystem and Valve/SteamOS toppling over Windows, finally putting the nail in its coffin.

I'd love to see it around that 400USD/EUR price, but I don't think it will be. Entry level gaming PCs in the UK start from £600 with a 3050 6gb, 16gb ram and 1tb SSD.

I expect to see a similar price point for this box. Which may price it's target audience out of it.

 

[NLxAROSA]

I'd love to see it around that 400USD/EUR price, but I don't think it will be. Entry level gaming PCs in the UK start from £600 with a 3050 6gb, 16gb ram and 1tb SSD.

Increasing RAM prices are also not helping for sure. That said, DF mentioned 'custom made chip' usually means 'some older stuff we had laying around on the shelves', so they might pull a rabbit out of the hat price-wise. In similar way that a Z1E is really just a 7840U without the NPU (so they can still sell the 'broken' 7840Us).