These are a lot more CPU heavy than the XBox One, PS4 or Piston systems... does that really gain you much for a gaming rig? (Seems from the CPU-Gaming analysis not so much, with the Civilization V exception.)
With better CPUS we can definitely expect the Steam OS to be far more powerful & feature-rich than that of the consoles, especially for things like browsing, consuming, and sharing content, all while gaming. I'd love to see multi-display support, something the consoles have never even considered.
Multi-display support for boxes targeting the living room seems a stretch. And if you need multiple displays and you're not in the living room, you're already running Steam on a Windows PC most likely.
Yeah, because the Rift existed 4 years ago when they started planning for these consoles. You could also argue that stuff like Smartglass is a kind of multi-display mode.
But expecting to be able to run 2 different games at once is crazy.
It absolutely is not. Two Haswell cores and 2 TeraFLOPS per game instance is enough for many, many games. It is even enough for a lot of more hardcore games run at non-ultra settings.
Problem is GPU's are bad at context switching. If you ask a GPU to do to things like that, it's like asking a HDD to multitask, IE nose dive in performance.
Steam and Steambox isn't going anywhere though. I hope Devs get on board with native Linux games and this is the BEST chance EVER for that to happen.
When the PS3 was first announced it included dual HDMI output to two monitors. I think they quickly scrapped the idea when they realized they wouldn't have enough processing power, and so few people would actually run dual monitors for games.
The problem is that anandtech's (and other sites, I'm sure) attempts to quantify the value of CPU power for gaming is that they pretty much ignore multiplayer and online games while those games are the classic case of being CPU bottlenecked. StarCraft 2 and indeed most any MMO and some FPSes become more CPU dependent the larger the number of units that are on screen or in scope for the game client to track. But benchmarking this consistently is extremely hard so they just exclude it. That doesn't mean it isn't an issue, however.
Except, we DO use StarCraft II, and even though it's poorly threaded and heavily CPU limited even on laptops, it does illustrate the problem with just grabbing any old CPU and calling it a day. Of course AMD's Mantle is an attempt to fix this (basically removing CPU overhead by going direct to the GPU), but whether or not we'll really see that adopted by a lot of games remains to be seen.
I was running Final Fantasy 14 Online with a core 2 and my gtx470. It ran like garbage. I bought a new motherboard for my old Core i7 system, and with the same card it runs like a charm. After that I realized how heavily MMOs actually use the CPU. The core 2 system was maxing out, my i7 system is sitting healthy at 50% usage w/ FFXIV running. So "any old CPU" won't cut it, especially moving into the future.
It's interesting that Steam didn't go for AMD GPUs because Mantle would have eliminated any real or perceived advantages the new consoles have over the SteamBox.
SteamOS doesn't seem to have a Mantle like low level API, right? That's probably why these consoles are getting away with weak CPU cores, not so much CPU overhead. SInce SteamOS is a more traditional full OS, it may require more CPU power on its graphics API.
Depends if it is CUDA optimized. If not then less of a loss by making it generic x86/OpenGL... perhaps nVidia just cut them a deal for being the reference spec.
Mantle is AMD's attempt to get out of having to keep their drivers up to date and save money. To get HUMA embraced by PC gaming. To make that purchase of ATI pay off.
Alas, I agree with you. It's going nowhere. AMD should have worked together with Intel and nVidia if they wanted a new spec that fixed what was wrong with DirectX/OpenGL. Instead, they went their own way and so now they'll be all by themselves when it goes kablooey.
Meanwhile, the low level API's that Sony and MS custom built for their respective consoles will remain the low level API's of choice over Mantle. It'll fail everywhere.
I just don't get the i3 spec. With both consoles going wide to 8 threads for this generation, I can't imagine that most next gen ports will work well, or at all, on a dual core cpu. Even considering the IPC differences between Haswell & Kabini. See BF3, Farcry3, Crysis3, Metro2033 etc for current gen examples.
Based on Cinebench single-core (http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Mobile/153), we can get an idea of the power of each core. If we take the i7-4700MQ as the Intel sample (it should be running the core at 3.4GHz single-threaded), that's nearly four times as fast as a Kabini core at 1.5GHz.
The Xbox One will run the CPU cores at 1.75GHz, while the PS4 is rumored to be 2.0GHz and potentially as high as 2.75GHz. Given AMD has the A6-5200 clocked at 2GHz with quad-core Kabini and it's a 25W part, I'd say closer to 2GHz seems likely for PS4 (with the entire system targeting <200W is my bet). If we scale linearly for clock speed, a single Haswell core at 3.4GHz is going to be about 2.5 times as fast as a Kabini core at 2.4GHz, or 3x as fast as a 2.0Hz Kabini core.
So, octal-core Kabini at 2.0GHz vs. dual-core Haswell at 3.4GHz, I'd say best-case (e.g. in heavily threaded workloads) you're looking at roughly equal processor performance. But worst-case (single-threaded or lightly threaded) the higher per-core performance of Haswell will still be 3x faster. That's why a fast dual-core isn't such a bad thing.
Except, if the performance is equal, you're paying more/performance anyway by getting an Intel chip.
Also Intel+Nvidia won't be able to unlock heterogenous computing power as well as AMD's APU's. And that's without even mentioning AMD's Mantle API, which would make it as fast as the console version (or faster if the hardware is better, like with these Nvidia GPU's).
But as it is, you're likely getting much less performance/price by adding the OpenGL overlay on top.
This, if AMD's hype is real and we see a $200 AMD card beating $300 Nvidia cards then eyes will start to open. If its just a few frames a seconds more then it will flop and become another proprietary tech most don't use like CUDA.
Such a shame that people already forgot the name of the company. It was Ageia, imo a shame it was sold to nVidia, shouldn't have been sold to AMD or Intel either imo, it should have been some 4.th player who would promote actual physics based gaming and not have it be a gimmick that no one wants to commit to fully.
AMD working with Intel and Nvidia would only weaken their market share against those competitors. Granted it would make sense to combine efforts at improving or establishing a new standard, but that's a difficult proposition for a company that seems to be forever in a state of catching up.
As I have understood it, Mantle is basically the same API as used in the Xbox One. So, developers optimizing and learning the ins and outs of Xbone, will find it is the same API as Mantle. This makes it easy to port games from/to Windows (Mantle) and to Xbone. I also suspect that the API used in PS4 is similar to Xbone. If this is true, it will be easy to port between Windows, Xbone and PS4! That is a huge win. If Xbone and PS4 takes off, then Mantle will live (because it is the same API). If they fail, then Mantle will fail.
God, hearing people say Xbone (how gross) makes me want to punch them in the face.
With that out of the way, yes, it's one of the many reasons going with AMD+Mantle would've been a much smarter choice by Valve, since all the games optimized to the metal for Xbox One and PS4 will get pretty much the same level of performance on an AMD Steam Machine, too.
Deal with it. Maybe you should have a less dirty mind? I see it as a perfectly valid abbreviation for the console. MS shouldn't have chosen such a bad name for their console...
I agree that it's gross, but it's what Microsoft had coming for letting their marketing guys attempt to have the console be known as "The One." They should have know what would happen when people who dislike MS had their fun with the name.
"Streaming means you would have to have a second gaming PC elsewhere in the house"
Actually, I would personally amend that to:
"Streaming means you would have to have a second g̶a̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ PC elsewhere in the house"
since the beauty of streaming is that you could use a "thin" client such as a laptop, netbook or nettop, or reuse an old PC whose specs are no longer good enough to run modern games on.
I am under the impression that the streaming is TO the steamOS, not FROM it. It is used to stream Windows games because Linux cannot run them natively. For this, you DO need a second gaming PC. It seems like a waste of money to invest so heavily in the steam box hardware when almost all of the AAA titles you'd play currently don't support it. I hope they would support dual booting the steam box into windows so you can actually do something with it :)
That's right, you are streaming the games from a Windows PC (preferably with beefy specs) to your SteamOS Machine, which is the "thin" client Voldenuit is talking about. So Voldenuit has it pretty wrong unfortunately.
Even better yet, they should require proper support for VGA passthrough in their hardware requirements so you can run Windows in a virtual machine with a separate graphics card dedicated to it. Then, you could have just one computer in your living room, and you could play all the games you want. Even my wife would be happy!
Or, you know, just stick with a single graphics card which would allow for a smaller, less obtrusive, system. Alternately, you could actually get some benefit from your second card rather than dedicate it to a virtual machine. Run Steam on Windows (instead of Windows on Steam OS) so that you get full support for your entire game library without any caveats. What exactly prevents you from connecting a windows box to the TV? It is all too easy to set up a windows system to auto log in and launch Steam in big screen mode (which is effectively what you will see in Steam OS IIRC). Until the reliance on Windows disappears, I see no point in paying for a middleman. That said, I'm all for developers targeting Linux.
It blurs the lines of PC/console if/when you use it to check email, use an office suite, edit photos, then play some games before reading AnandTech. Is it an expensive console or cheap PC?
Anyway, thanks for the nostalgic reference to Neo Geo. A kid down the street had one and never let anybody play on it. Those were the days.
personally as a PC gamer i look forward to valves efforts. While i hope streaming is just a start for the steam OS and they eventually adopt all games run natively on steam OS (or at least most), Streaming in itself is a strong contender. I currently use a nvidia shield and love it. My fiance is also an avid PC/mobile gamer and we are getting ready to have kids. we talked about the potential steam box had for our kids as they grow up and our wallet. The idea we both run high end gaming rigs and our kids could piggy back off our accounts (also giving us control of how long they play ;). Personally i think its genius i hope it succeeds and doesn't become the next "phantom" console of this PC generation...so far PC/console hybrids have gone badly. Valve is in a unique position an has the software history with dev's to make it work but only time will tell if they can pull it off.
They're thinking long-term. The goal of SteamOS is to make Linux a more viable gaming platform. By making prebuilt, preconfigured Steam Machines and a simpler-to-install SteamOS, they're knocking down some of the barriers to adoption. Right now, they're aiming just to make it a more supported platform, make it an attractive porting target.
The eventual goal, of course, is to eliminate the cost of Windows from PC gaming. It's harder to compete with consoles when you have to spend another $100 just for an OS.
"The eventual goal, of course, is to eliminate the cost of Windows from PC gaming. It's harder to compete with consoles when you have to spend another $100 just for an OS."
For the really cheap hardware (Intel Silvermont atom/AMD Jaguar mini desktop, etc) removing the price of the OS (by having this steam OS) could have a big impact on total cost of ownership. Steam OS may also have impact on revitalizing older Win XP machines that will not be upgraded to another Windows OS when MS drops support for XP in April 2014.
....but I am skeptical removing Windows from a high end host desktops will help. If anything not having Windows on those machines could reduce functionality down to the point where the hardware is no longer justifiable.
Valve wants to cut out Windows, but it isn't to make our PCs $100 cheaper.
It's so they don't have to pay a 30% cut of every sale IF (and this is a huuuuge if) Microsoft locks down program installs and suddenly everything you buy on Steam is an "in-app purchase".
The other stuff about being able to implement a lot of game focused optimizations is a side benefit, and I'm curious to see how much mileage they can get from that.
Also, if you look up any of Gabe Newell's comments about Windows 8 or many Apple dev's comments about the OS X App Store you can see why they feel they have to go this direction.
I don't know if I 100% agree with how Gabe sees it playing out, but I have to admit that it's possible.
"The other stuff about being able to implement a lot of game focused optimizations is a side benefit, and I'm curious to see how much mileage they can get from that."
Yes, that is interesting.
How much performance can Valve get with atom/jaguar on their optimized Linux vs. Windows?
Maybe the can get enough steam (no pun intended) with their atom/jaguar/ARM thin client boxes they end up playing games better than we expect?
In other words, maybe at some point the SteamOS thin clients become developed enough to begin playing more games natively rather than being used mostly (or purely) for streaming.
They better be used for more than just streaming, or anything more than an Intel iGPU is going to be wasted! Putting Titan in some of the prototypes suggests Valve is really hoping to spur native SteamOS (Linux) titles. That or they're planning on some sort of emulation in the future, a la WINE. Otherwise there's no real point in a $1000 or even a $300 GPU.
I seriously doubt it. I'd expect the other way around actually. Windows is highly optimized, and games are going to be optimized for it. Maybe in the long run this will help Linux get up to speed, but mid term expect Windows to perform better, if anything.
And you're saying "thin client boxes they end up playing games better than we expect?" Well if it's just streaming the game, then the performance is entirely on the Windows PC that's actually running the game. The only part the "thin client" plays is whether it's powerful enough to decode the audio/video and send back the controller inputs.
I doubt desktop apps is going away anytime soon. And as long as desktop apps lives, steam will work as it should. Since games are still made as desktop apps only these years, it is a guarantee that desktop app will not go away for at least 3 other windows versions.
If Microsoft kills control of your PC, they're dead, at least for desktop OSes. Having their own store, well unfortunately at this point that makes sense for them. REQUIRING their own store? To me that's no longer a PC, and would instantly drive gigantic swaths of marketshare to OS X and Linux.
Of course the irony of all this is Steam itself IS just such a closed, activation laden store, no better from that perspective than Apple or Microsoft's. (even if I do view it as better at least because you can back up programs/games and it's somewhat cross platform).
What I see wrong with this logic is, eliminating Windows from (gaming) PC is dumbing down that PC to a console level in terms of functionality. My gaming machine is also my workhorse, being the most powerful machine in my house - I edit my RAM photos, my videos, everything else pretty much. Some of that I could do on my laptop, but with limitations of small screen, less RAM, CPU power... but some, I probably could not do at all without making it a self-punishment.
So... if Valve's proposition is to dump Windows and make gaming PC on SteamOS, what I get here is machine with heavily limited functionality - basically a console - but, while more powerful, also more expensive. But with level of games' optimization that goes into console's single hardware platform, I fear that actual, real life performance difference here will not vindicate price difference.
Regardless... I just cannot justify spending that sort of money on gaming box, so my PC gaming will remain Windows for unforeseen time.
"I’m not sure even a $400 Steam Machine would be all that big a draw – you could just connect your Windows PC to the HDTV at that point."
It's a big draw for me. My big powerful desktop is in my office. My big screen TV and favorite couch are in my living room. And my bed is in, you guessed it, the bedroom. I enjoy games (and videos, etc) in all 3 rooms and I'd much rather pay for & maintain one full power machine vs. three. Hopefully Steam Boxes meant chiefly as streaming clients can not only be affordable, but also be mostly self-maintaining. I've enjoyed my various HTPCs, but sometimes I feel like I spend more time tinkering with them than I do watching content on them.
The prototypes aren't anywhere near being thin clients, though, which is what I'm getting at. For streaming, if NVIDIA can do it on a $25 SoC in SHIELD, you could do something similar with just about any current x86 CPU. It remains to be seen how low down the food chain Steam Machines will go; as a streaming only system, I think pricing would have to be south of $300.
I would personally like to see some sort of streaming client that is similar to an AppleTV or Roku. Use a Tegra 4 or other SOC, keep it under $100, and allow me to stream anything (not just games) from my computer. It would also be great if it worked with Android apps like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, WatchESPN, and games (since you'd obviously have a controller to play your Steam games from your PC). As far as streaming from the PC, I'd probably only use it to stream games like Bastion, Limbo, etc. - casual games like a lot of the Humble Bundle offerings. It would be good for watching Flash only video that only PC's can stream like last night's stream of Sunday Night Football (which rendered my iPad and AppleTV useless). The NBC Live Extra iOS app just redirected me to Safari which couldn't play it. What a joke.
I think these prototypes are like their "best" alternative in the good/better/best scenario that Gabe described... And they're just using them to test out the OS. I imagine it'd be harder to prototype a thin client so early on. Although they're offering a bewildering amount of choices for something that isn't even supposed to be their mainstream option, kinda confusing tbh but maybe the press is just reading too much into it. Personally I'd love a thin client that streams decently from my desktop, I've never bothered with HTPCs and I'd still rather play most games with a kb/mouse and a high res display (or 3) but certain games would definitely be fun on the couch.
No, because SHIELD needs the nVidia GPU in the PC doing the streaming, and the SteamOS Machines aren't doing the streaming, they are on the receiving end of it. The stream is nothing more than h264 encoded video which can be decoded fast with anything these days. You could even throw a 10USD SoC at the problem and be done with it on the receiving end. The best thing to do would be get Intel iGPU do the job of decoding it.
But the only platform that supports streaming right now for NVIDIA also runs an NVIDIA GPU (Tegra 4), so it would not be surprising to see NVIDIA restrict their streaming to Linux OS to NVIDIA GPUs on both ends. "We're using hardware features to help with the encoding/decoding" will be the excuse, but we all know the decoding side is basically a piece of cake compared to real-time encoding.
16 GB RAM as minimum spec...? 8 would be plenty for 99% of the games out there, and RAM is very easily upgradeable by the end user, so this seems strange to me. However, if these are meant as a sort of dev kit, it would make sense. Running a Geforce Titan, combined with an i7 4770, off of a 450W power supply seems like a stretch - AFAIK, the GPU alone will use well over 300W under load... Also, why no AMD options? It seems to me that AMD is currently a better choice for low-end CPU's, (and the GPU's are on par with nVidia for the most part) so the i3 could be replaced by an AMD part - maybe there is some kind of deal going on here... ;)
Titan has a TDP of 250W, it's not going to use over 300W. The Anandtech review showed a total system draw of up to 430W, but they were using an overclocked 6 core Sandy Bridge E (4.3ghz). In the original review of that part, at 4.6ghz it pulled 320W under full load! Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/intel-core-i7-3...
Too bad they didn't go with AMD and Mantle to be able to get the same level of performance with more or less the same cost of a console, instead of paying 2-3x more for the same performance level.
Even John Carmack agrees Mantle+Steam Machines would be killer:
As for the native Linux games, 20 percent of all new Steam games are already Linux native, and that's before Valve even announcing all this SteamOS/Steam Machines stuff:
That's just a fantasy. There's no way there's anything close to that much overhead with OpenGL or Direct X. That would be utterly incompetent if there was.
AMD's Huddy in 2011, around the time when DICE and others started asking them for direct hardware access:
"On consoles, you can draw maybe 10,000 or 20,000 chunks of geometry in a frame, and you can do that at 30-60fps. On a PC, you can't typically draw more than 2-3,000 without getting into trouble with performance, and that's quite surprising - the PC can actually show you only a tenth of the performance if you need a separate batch for each draw call. "
Haven't you noticed yourself that even years after the consoles launch, and with much lower hardware, the consoles still somehow manage to keep up in graphics?
"Keep up" is being generous. Modern console games generally have worse geometry and the textures look like puke. Some elements look decent, and considering the age of the hardware they look fantastic, but really we've been holding back the quality of console ports for at least five years thanks to underpowered hardware.
Man look at those specs. There would be nothing stopping me from swapping one of those 770s,780s, or titans out for the 560Ti on my windows machine so I could go full streaming.
A proper streaming protocol, application, and implementation has been attempted and failed at least half a dozen times in the past few years. Nvidia's solution is nice but you're really at the mercy of how well they play ball with game makers (ick). low latency otf compression, transmission, and decode. It doesn't seem very hard. Tons of gaming machines have unused IGPs. IGP accelerated compression is bloody fast (like 2 hour move 1080p movie @30fps in under a half hour fast). Wasn't this the entire raison d'etre for quicksync?
Uhhh... I'm missing something. It sounds like it's cheaper to move my Windows PC with Steam to the living room unless: 1. Is there some hardware discount buying from Steam? 2. Are there going to be local multiplayer games supported by this "console"? 3. Are there exclusive games that will only be on Linux versus Windows?
This product is designed for a casual or non-techy gamer and not an enthusiast. This is just to put everything in a nice neat package. Grab your windows box and throw steamOS on it and then just order a steam controller. I've always preferred sitting at the PC to play a game instead of a couch but I'll throw steamOS on an older box and using it for streaming games when I feel like sitting in the living room.
Ah... So really this is more like an "Apple" move. Just wrap it up nice & shiny =P Was really hoping with Valve we would get some extra software/hardware improvements or more competition to consoles.
"the 4310 has HD 4400 while the other two have HD 4600, but since they use GT2 and the max clock is 1.15GHz I’m not sure why Intel uses different model numbers" HD4400 and HD4600 use GT2 both, but HD4400 has only 16 active execution units, HD4600 has full-enabled GT2 with 20 active execution units
a little embarrassing but I'll have to send you to the search engines for example, there is a screenshot of gpu-z http://www.3dnews.ru/assets/external/illustrations... from russian review of new dual-core haswell
Yes, bold move choosing the only discrete GPU company with usable Linux drivers for your Linux-based platform, who also happens to have a 61% marketshare...
Mantle will provide a nice small performance boost to developers implementing it, but it's not going to make a big enough difference to shift the market much.
So an average user like me will have to stream windows games from an FX-6300/HD-7850 to an i7/Titan? Well, at least we can play L4D2 on a 4k TV. ;) To be honest, I think this streaming idea is kinda nice when you build a cheap HTPC. Are there any tools that already do this and how are the required specs (rasperry pie anyone)?
There already are quite a few android Apps that allow you to stream games competently from your PC to the Android device. Just google "android remote gaming" and look at the first results. :)
im just confused as to why they chose nvidia for the steambox. amd gpus are going to be in all the next generation consoles so you would think valve would do the same so they have an even greater chance of 3rd party developers supporting steambox. also, hasnt nvidia's support for linux been less than stellar over the years compared to amd? im a little hesitant to trust this news
Unfortunately you have that switched. NVIDIA has the best Linux drivers and that's one of the primary reasons they were likely selected. AMD's Linux drivers are universally considered to be quite awful. Although AMD does have a separate open source driver that, by open source standards, isn't that bad, it's still subpar.
Umm... these seem to be nice machines, but pairing it with 450W PSU? 4770K+Titan? Honestly, at peak load you'll be getting not so nice voltage characteristics, giving the machine less stability and some extra heat, not to mention it will sound like an angry vacuum cleaner. Happy switching PSU after 1 year usage... if it doesn't damage something else along. That setup would be healthy with 600 or 650W, definitely not 450W. Also... how many 450W PSUs will have 8+6 PCIe connectors available? Really hope they mean 450W+ and actual 450 is just for the lowest setup.
Unfortunately that one puts you 5A short of minimal GTX780 recommended rating (12V@42A if I am not mistaken)... not counting in HDD/SSD and optical drive...
If Valve's motivation is to expand PC gaming, it needs to have systems with comparable price with next gen consoles while produce similar visual and frame rate, and let the flexibility of PC (e.g. Steam Controller, keyboard/mouse, etc.) as the selling point. Having powerful but expensive PC systems (the ecosystem has been there done that) won't be enough. Price is still the deciding factor. If Valve's motivation is to expand their own business, then it's just an alternative to existing PC gaming market.
I have more faith in AMD's initiative to cut down software overhead in PC gaming as a cost effective way to expand PC gaming market. Less overhead means cheaper systems to provide equal experience. When you level the playing field in that area, then you can market other advantages of PC gaming, which can drive PC and components sales to non-enthusiast crowd. When you need a CPU that alone costs as much as a whole console just to overcome the software inefficiency, something wasteful going on.
I still don't see how this is positive for PC gaming Valve is specifying what we should use as PC gamers? Why just Nvidia Valve? You got some sort of deal with them? I just see Valve trying to make their own closed console like platform. We already have that with the Xbox and PlayStation. I have no interest in a 3rd one.
Console players are going to be in for quite a shock when they get one of these and then try to play BF4 multiplayer with a controller. Since it's the PC version, they will be playing mostly against people with a keyboard and mouse, and the only way they'll get a kill is if the enemy is lagging out...
if the desire is to make this like a console, will they have some way to play multiplayer using the same box? I don't own a console and the only reason I would consider it is that it allows multiplayer w/o out having to buy 4 game dvds at $60 a pop. $200+ just to play multiplayer is extreme. Not everyone has high speed internet for gaming. Also, multiplayer on the same screen can be annoying, screen peeking etc., even with a 1080p 10ft projector screen. I personally prefer to buy the old clearance games that allow lan play so me and the kids can play together.
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rocketscience315 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
These are a lot more CPU heavy than the XBox One, PS4 or Piston systems... does that really gain you much for a gaming rig? (Seems from the CPU-Gaming analysis not so much, with the Civilization V exception.)w_km - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
With better CPUS we can definitely expect the Steam OS to be far more powerful & feature-rich than that of the consoles, especially for things like browsing, consuming, and sharing content, all while gaming. I'd love to see multi-display support, something the consoles have never even considered.JarredWalton - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Multi-display support for boxes targeting the living room seems a stretch. And if you need multiple displays and you're not in the living room, you're already running Steam on a Windows PC most likely.Darbyothrill - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Is it? Consider having one person running a game on a television and one person using an Oculus Rift. With the 4 TeraFLOP Titan, it is feasible.A5 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Yeah, because the Rift existed 4 years ago when they started planning for these consoles. You could also argue that stuff like Smartglass is a kind of multi-display mode.But expecting to be able to run 2 different games at once is crazy.
Darbyothrill - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
It absolutely is not. Two Haswell cores and 2 TeraFLOPS per game instance is enough for many, many games. It is even enough for a lot of more hardcore games run at non-ultra settings.SlyNine - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Problem is GPU's are bad at context switching. If you ask a GPU to do to things like that, it's like asking a HDD to multitask, IE nose dive in performance.Steam and Steambox isn't going anywhere though. I hope Devs get on board with native Linux games and this is the BEST chance EVER for that to happen.
nathanddrews - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Valve has officially announced that there will be AMD machines as well:http://www.pcworld.com/article/2053680/valve-amd-b...
zim2411 - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
When the PS3 was first announced it included dual HDMI output to two monitors. I think they quickly scrapped the idea when they realized they wouldn't have enough processing power, and so few people would actually run dual monitors for games.Sancus - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
The problem is that anandtech's (and other sites, I'm sure) attempts to quantify the value of CPU power for gaming is that they pretty much ignore multiplayer and online games while those games are the classic case of being CPU bottlenecked. StarCraft 2 and indeed most any MMO and some FPSes become more CPU dependent the larger the number of units that are on screen or in scope for the game client to track. But benchmarking this consistently is extremely hard so they just exclude it. That doesn't mean it isn't an issue, however.JarredWalton - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Except, we DO use StarCraft II, and even though it's poorly threaded and heavily CPU limited even on laptops, it does illustrate the problem with just grabbing any old CPU and calling it a day. Of course AMD's Mantle is an attempt to fix this (basically removing CPU overhead by going direct to the GPU), but whether or not we'll really see that adopted by a lot of games remains to be seen.splatter85 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
I was running Final Fantasy 14 Online with a core 2 and my gtx470. It ran like garbage. I bought a new motherboard for my old Core i7 system, and with the same card it runs like a charm. After that I realized how heavily MMOs actually use the CPU. The core 2 system was maxing out, my i7 system is sitting healthy at 50% usage w/ FFXIV running. So "any old CPU" won't cut it, especially moving into the future.augiem - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
It's interesting that Steam didn't go for AMD GPUs because Mantle would have eliminated any real or perceived advantages the new consoles have over the SteamBox.tipoo - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
SteamOS doesn't seem to have a Mantle like low level API, right? That's probably why these consoles are getting away with weak CPU cores, not so much CPU overhead. SInce SteamOS is a more traditional full OS, it may require more CPU power on its graphics API.Sttm - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Bold move going all Nvidia. If Mantle gets widespread adoption AMD will handily win the GPU War for this whole console cycle.silenceisgolden - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
That means they need to get it out the door first and show that it is worth using.rocketscience315 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Depends if it is CUDA optimized. If not then less of a loss by making it generic x86/OpenGL... perhaps nVidia just cut them a deal for being the reference spec.Wreckage - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Mantle is not going anywhere. A lot of hype and that's all.HisDivineOrder - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Mantle is AMD's attempt to get out of having to keep their drivers up to date and save money. To get HUMA embraced by PC gaming. To make that purchase of ATI pay off.Alas, I agree with you. It's going nowhere. AMD should have worked together with Intel and nVidia if they wanted a new spec that fixed what was wrong with DirectX/OpenGL. Instead, they went their own way and so now they'll be all by themselves when it goes kablooey.
Meanwhile, the low level API's that Sony and MS custom built for their respective consoles will remain the low level API's of choice over Mantle. It'll fail everywhere.
Sttm - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Well we'll see if it's hype or not in a couple months when BF4 is patched over. Then we can have this argument for real.takeship - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I just don't get the i3 spec. With both consoles going wide to 8 threads for this generation, I can't imagine that most next gen ports will work well, or at all, on a dual core cpu. Even considering the IPC differences between Haswell & Kabini. See BF3, Farcry3, Crysis3, Metro2033 etc for current gen examples.JarredWalton - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Based on Cinebench single-core (http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Mobile/153), we can get an idea of the power of each core. If we take the i7-4700MQ as the Intel sample (it should be running the core at 3.4GHz single-threaded), that's nearly four times as fast as a Kabini core at 1.5GHz.The Xbox One will run the CPU cores at 1.75GHz, while the PS4 is rumored to be 2.0GHz and potentially as high as 2.75GHz. Given AMD has the A6-5200 clocked at 2GHz with quad-core Kabini and it's a 25W part, I'd say closer to 2GHz seems likely for PS4 (with the entire system targeting <200W is my bet). If we scale linearly for clock speed, a single Haswell core at 3.4GHz is going to be about 2.5 times as fast as a Kabini core at 2.4GHz, or 3x as fast as a 2.0Hz Kabini core.
So, octal-core Kabini at 2.0GHz vs. dual-core Haswell at 3.4GHz, I'd say best-case (e.g. in heavily threaded workloads) you're looking at roughly equal processor performance. But worst-case (single-threaded or lightly threaded) the higher per-core performance of Haswell will still be 3x faster. That's why a fast dual-core isn't such a bad thing.
Krysto - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Except, if the performance is equal, you're paying more/performance anyway by getting an Intel chip.Also Intel+Nvidia won't be able to unlock heterogenous computing power as well as AMD's APU's. And that's without even mentioning AMD's Mantle API, which would make it as fast as the console version (or faster if the hardware is better, like with these Nvidia GPU's).
But as it is, you're likely getting much less performance/price by adding the OpenGL overlay on top.
Hrel - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Aren't the Core i3's also hyperthreaded?JarredWalton - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Yes, which is why two cores (with Hyper-Threading) that are ~3x faster end up being equal to eight cores.tipoo - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
"while the PS4 is rumored to be 2.0GHz and potentially as high as 2.75GHz"I thought it was already known to be 1.6GHz. Is it even feasible to clock that core so high?
Jumangi - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
This, if AMD's hype is real and we see a $200 AMD card beating $300 Nvidia cards then eyes will start to open. If its just a few frames a seconds more then it will flop and become another proprietary tech most don't use like CUDA.yannigr - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
You mean the same way Nvidia worked with AMD for PhysX?... Oh wait...Hrel - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
They didn't work with anyone on Physx. They bought it from PhysX.Medallish - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Such a shame that people already forgot the name of the company. It was Ageia, imo a shame it was sold to nVidia, shouldn't have been sold to AMD or Intel either imo, it should have been some 4.th player who would promote actual physics based gaming and not have it be a gimmick that no one wants to commit to fully.tnypxl - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
AMD working with Intel and Nvidia would only weaken their market share against those competitors. Granted it would make sense to combine efforts at improving or establishing a new standard, but that's a difficult proposition for a company that seems to be forever in a state of catching up.Brutalizer - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
As I have understood it, Mantle is basically the same API as used in the Xbox One. So, developers optimizing and learning the ins and outs of Xbone, will find it is the same API as Mantle. This makes it easy to port games from/to Windows (Mantle) and to Xbone. I also suspect that the API used in PS4 is similar to Xbone. If this is true, it will be easy to port between Windows, Xbone and PS4! That is a huge win. If Xbone and PS4 takes off, then Mantle will live (because it is the same API). If they fail, then Mantle will fail.Krysto - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
God, hearing people say Xbone (how gross) makes me want to punch them in the face.With that out of the way, yes, it's one of the many reasons going with AMD+Mantle would've been a much smarter choice by Valve, since all the games optimized to the metal for Xbox One and PS4 will get pretty much the same level of performance on an AMD Steam Machine, too.
Death666Angel - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
XBone.tuxfool - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Deal with it. Maybe you should have a less dirty mind? I see it as a perfectly valid abbreviation for the console. MS shouldn't have chosen such a bad name for their console...FearfulSPARTAN - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
I prefer x1, but everyone apears to have adopted xbone...JlHADJOE - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Xbone!JeffFlanagan - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
I agree that it's gross, but it's what Microsoft had coming for letting their marketing guys attempt to have the console be known as "The One." They should have know what would happen when people who dislike MS had their fun with the name.Voldenuit - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
"Streaming means you would have to have a second gaming PC elsewhere in the house"Actually, I would personally amend that to:
"Streaming means you would have to have a second g̶a̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ PC elsewhere in the house"
since the beauty of streaming is that you could use a "thin" client such as a laptop, netbook or nettop, or reuse an old PC whose specs are no longer good enough to run modern games on.
inighthawki - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
I am under the impression that the streaming is TO the steamOS, not FROM it. It is used to stream Windows games because Linux cannot run them natively. For this, you DO need a second gaming PC. It seems like a waste of money to invest so heavily in the steam box hardware when almost all of the AAA titles you'd play currently don't support it. I hope they would support dual booting the steam box into windows so you can actually do something with it :)Death666Angel - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
That's right, you are streaming the games from a Windows PC (preferably with beefy specs) to your SteamOS Machine, which is the "thin" client Voldenuit is talking about. So Voldenuit has it pretty wrong unfortunately.Ktracho - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Even better yet, they should require proper support for VGA passthrough in their hardware requirements so you can run Windows in a virtual machine with a separate graphics card dedicated to it. Then, you could have just one computer in your living room, and you could play all the games you want. Even my wife would be happy!JPForums - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Or, you know, just stick with a single graphics card which would allow for a smaller, less obtrusive, system. Alternately, you could actually get some benefit from your second card rather than dedicate it to a virtual machine. Run Steam on Windows (instead of Windows on Steam OS) so that you get full support for your entire game library without any caveats. What exactly prevents you from connecting a windows box to the TV? It is all too easy to set up a windows system to auto log in and launch Steam in big screen mode (which is effectively what you will see in Steam OS IIRC). Until the reliance on Windows disappears, I see no point in paying for a middleman. That said, I'm all for developers targeting Linux.Notmyusualid - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
This reminds me of the Neo Geo days...They were infinitely more expensive than the SNES / etc, but they were true arcade ports, with the best hardware. To hell with the cost.
Titan in a console. Wow, well done.
Go big or go home.
Flame away...
A5 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
It's not a console in any real sense.Especially with a 4770 + Titan config, it's a beefy HTPC with a custom OS. Completely different class of device.
purerice - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
It blurs the lines of PC/console if/when you use it to check email, use an office suite, edit photos, then play some games before reading AnandTech. Is it an expensive console or cheap PC?Anyway, thanks for the nostalgic reference to Neo Geo. A kid down the street had one and never let anybody play on it. Those were the days.
atomicWAR - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
personally as a PC gamer i look forward to valves efforts. While i hope streaming is just a start for the steam OS and they eventually adopt all games run natively on steam OS (or at least most), Streaming in itself is a strong contender. I currently use a nvidia shield and love it. My fiance is also an avid PC/mobile gamer and we are getting ready to have kids. we talked about the potential steam box had for our kids as they grow up and our wallet. The idea we both run high end gaming rigs and our kids could piggy back off our accounts (also giving us control of how long they play ;). Personally i think its genius i hope it succeeds and doesn't become the next "phantom" console of this PC generation...so far PC/console hybrids have gone badly. Valve is in a unique position an has the software history with dev's to make it work but only time will tell if they can pull it off.Da W - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
And why then, with such a PC, shouldn't I install Windows?And if i install Windows, why would I need steam OS?
makerofthegames - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
They're thinking long-term. The goal of SteamOS is to make Linux a more viable gaming platform. By making prebuilt, preconfigured Steam Machines and a simpler-to-install SteamOS, they're knocking down some of the barriers to adoption. Right now, they're aiming just to make it a more supported platform, make it an attractive porting target.The eventual goal, of course, is to eliminate the cost of Windows from PC gaming. It's harder to compete with consoles when you have to spend another $100 just for an OS.
Computer Bottleneck - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
"The eventual goal, of course, is to eliminate the cost of Windows from PC gaming. It's harder to compete with consoles when you have to spend another $100 just for an OS."For the really cheap hardware (Intel Silvermont atom/AMD Jaguar mini desktop, etc) removing the price of the OS (by having this steam OS) could have a big impact on total cost of ownership. Steam OS may also have impact on revitalizing older Win XP machines that will not be upgraded to another Windows OS when MS drops support for XP in April 2014.
....but I am skeptical removing Windows from a high end host desktops will help. If anything not having Windows on those machines could reduce functionality down to the point where the hardware is no longer justifiable.
A5 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
You're really close to the right answer.Valve wants to cut out Windows, but it isn't to make our PCs $100 cheaper.
It's so they don't have to pay a 30% cut of every sale IF (and this is a huuuuge if) Microsoft locks down program installs and suddenly everything you buy on Steam is an "in-app purchase".
The other stuff about being able to implement a lot of game focused optimizations is a side benefit, and I'm curious to see how much mileage they can get from that.
A5 - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Also, if you look up any of Gabe Newell's comments about Windows 8 or many Apple dev's comments about the OS X App Store you can see why they feel they have to go this direction.I don't know if I 100% agree with how Gabe sees it playing out, but I have to admit that it's possible.
Computer Bottleneck - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
"The other stuff about being able to implement a lot of game focused optimizations is a side benefit, and I'm curious to see how much mileage they can get from that."Yes, that is interesting.
How much performance can Valve get with atom/jaguar on their optimized Linux vs. Windows?
Maybe the can get enough steam (no pun intended) with their atom/jaguar/ARM thin client boxes they end up playing games better than we expect?
Computer Bottleneck - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
In other words, maybe at some point the SteamOS thin clients become developed enough to begin playing more games natively rather than being used mostly (or purely) for streaming.JarredWalton - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
They better be used for more than just streaming, or anything more than an Intel iGPU is going to be wasted! Putting Titan in some of the prototypes suggests Valve is really hoping to spur native SteamOS (Linux) titles. That or they're planning on some sort of emulation in the future, a la WINE. Otherwise there's no real point in a $1000 or even a $300 GPU.Wolfpup - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
Yep, I can't imagine that this streaming thing is anything more than a stopgap.Wolfpup - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
I seriously doubt it. I'd expect the other way around actually. Windows is highly optimized, and games are going to be optimized for it. Maybe in the long run this will help Linux get up to speed, but mid term expect Windows to perform better, if anything.And you're saying "thin client boxes they end up playing games better than we expect?" Well if it's just streaming the game, then the performance is entirely on the Windows PC that's actually running the game. The only part the "thin client" plays is whether it's powerful enough to decode the audio/video and send back the controller inputs.
bountygiver - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
I doubt desktop apps is going away anytime soon. And as long as desktop apps lives, steam will work as it should. Since games are still made as desktop apps only these years, it is a guarantee that desktop app will not go away for at least 3 other windows versions.Wolfpup - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
If Microsoft kills control of your PC, they're dead, at least for desktop OSes. Having their own store, well unfortunately at this point that makes sense for them. REQUIRING their own store? To me that's no longer a PC, and would instantly drive gigantic swaths of marketshare to OS X and Linux.Of course the irony of all this is Steam itself IS just such a closed, activation laden store, no better from that perspective than Apple or Microsoft's. (even if I do view it as better at least because you can back up programs/games and it's somewhat cross platform).
nikon133 - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
What I see wrong with this logic is, eliminating Windows from (gaming) PC is dumbing down that PC to a console level in terms of functionality. My gaming machine is also my workhorse, being the most powerful machine in my house - I edit my RAM photos, my videos, everything else pretty much. Some of that I could do on my laptop, but with limitations of small screen, less RAM, CPU power... but some, I probably could not do at all without making it a self-punishment.So... if Valve's proposition is to dump Windows and make gaming PC on SteamOS, what I get here is machine with heavily limited functionality - basically a console - but, while more powerful, also more expensive. But with level of games' optimization that goes into console's single hardware platform, I fear that actual, real life performance difference here will not vindicate price difference.
Regardless... I just cannot justify spending that sort of money on gaming box, so my PC gaming will remain Windows for unforeseen time.
Da W - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
What's a 100$ in a 3000$ rig?brucek2 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
"I’m not sure even a $400 Steam Machine would be all that big a draw – you could just connect your Windows PC to the HDTV at that point."It's a big draw for me. My big powerful desktop is in my office. My big screen TV and favorite couch are in my living room. And my bed is in, you guessed it, the bedroom. I enjoy games (and videos, etc) in all 3 rooms and I'd much rather pay for & maintain one full power machine vs. three. Hopefully Steam Boxes meant chiefly as streaming clients can not only be affordable, but also be mostly self-maintaining. I've enjoyed my various HTPCs, but sometimes I feel like I spend more time tinkering with them than I do watching content on them.
JarredWalton - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
The prototypes aren't anywhere near being thin clients, though, which is what I'm getting at. For streaming, if NVIDIA can do it on a $25 SoC in SHIELD, you could do something similar with just about any current x86 CPU. It remains to be seen how low down the food chain Steam Machines will go; as a streaming only system, I think pricing would have to be south of $300.EnzoFX - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Did they not promise small streaming-only "clients"? That is the draw.ezridah - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
I would personally like to see some sort of streaming client that is similar to an AppleTV or Roku. Use a Tegra 4 or other SOC, keep it under $100, and allow me to stream anything (not just games) from my computer. It would also be great if it worked with Android apps like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, WatchESPN, and games (since you'd obviously have a controller to play your Steam games from your PC). As far as streaming from the PC, I'd probably only use it to stream games like Bastion, Limbo, etc. - casual games like a lot of the Humble Bundle offerings. It would be good for watching Flash only video that only PC's can stream like last night's stream of Sunday Night Football (which rendered my iPad and AppleTV useless). The NBC Live Extra iOS app just redirected me to Safari which couldn't play it. What a joke.Impulses - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
I think these prototypes are like their "best" alternative in the good/better/best scenario that Gabe described... And they're just using them to test out the OS. I imagine it'd be harder to prototype a thin client so early on. Although they're offering a bewildering amount of choices for something that isn't even supposed to be their mainstream option, kinda confusing tbh but maybe the press is just reading too much into it. Personally I'd love a thin client that streams decently from my desktop, I've never bothered with HTPCs and I'd still rather play most games with a kb/mouse and a high res display (or 3) but certain games would definitely be fun on the couch.ThomasS31 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Is it possible that the technology behind nVidia's SHIELD is the reason of choice for GPUs?Death666Angel - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
No, because SHIELD needs the nVidia GPU in the PC doing the streaming, and the SteamOS Machines aren't doing the streaming, they are on the receiving end of it. The stream is nothing more than h264 encoded video which can be decoded fast with anything these days. You could even throw a 10USD SoC at the problem and be done with it on the receiving end. The best thing to do would be get Intel iGPU do the job of decoding it.JarredWalton - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
But the only platform that supports streaming right now for NVIDIA also runs an NVIDIA GPU (Tegra 4), so it would not be surprising to see NVIDIA restrict their streaming to Linux OS to NVIDIA GPUs on both ends. "We're using hardware features to help with the encoding/decoding" will be the excuse, but we all know the decoding side is basically a piece of cake compared to real-time encoding.Death666Angel - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
True. But I'm just being optimistic, that Valve won't completely abandon their "Good Guy Gabe" image.szimm - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
16 GB RAM as minimum spec...? 8 would be plenty for 99% of the games out there, and RAM is very easily upgradeable by the end user, so this seems strange to me. However, if these are meant as a sort of dev kit, it would make sense. Running a Geforce Titan, combined with an i7 4770, off of a 450W power supply seems like a stretch - AFAIK, the GPU alone will use well over 300W under load... Also, why no AMD options? It seems to me that AMD is currently a better choice for low-end CPU's, (and the GPU's are on par with nVidia for the most part) so the i3 could be replaced by an AMD part - maybe there is some kind of deal going on here... ;)overzealot - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Titan has a TDP of 250W, it's not going to use over 300W.The Anandtech review showed a total system draw of up to 430W, but they were using an overclocked 6 core Sandy Bridge E (4.3ghz).
In the original review of that part, at 4.6ghz it pulled 320W under full load!
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/intel-core-i7-3...
overzealot - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
That's at the wall total system power again, not just the CPU, but it would be a reasonable guide for what "excluding Titan power" should look like.overzealot - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
That review was using a 5870 with a TDP of 50W, which should have been mostly idle during that test.Krysto - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Too bad they didn't go with AMD and Mantle to be able to get the same level of performance with more or less the same cost of a console, instead of paying 2-3x more for the same performance level.Even John Carmack agrees Mantle+Steam Machines would be killer:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-mantle-api-xb...
As for the native Linux games, 20 percent of all new Steam games are already Linux native, and that's before Valve even announcing all this SteamOS/Steam Machines stuff:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&am...
Sttm - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Yes, but it's a crappy 20%. No one's switching platforms for Indie titles.Wolfpup - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
That's just a fantasy. There's no way there's anything close to that much overhead with OpenGL or Direct X. That would be utterly incompetent if there was.Krysto - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
AMD's Huddy in 2011, around the time when DICE and others started asking them for direct hardware access:"On consoles, you can draw maybe 10,000 or 20,000 chunks of geometry in a frame, and you can do that at 30-60fps. On a PC, you can't typically draw more than 2-3,000 without getting into trouble with performance, and that's quite surprising - the PC can actually show you only a tenth of the performance if you need a separate batch for each draw call. "
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/03/...
And these are slides from DICE last week suggesting they can draw 9x more calls per second with Mantle than DirectX:
http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/files/img/2013/09/a...
It can also utilize all 8 cores fully, something DirectX can't do right now:
http://cdn3.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/0...
Haven't you noticed yourself that even years after the consoles launch, and with much lower hardware, the consoles still somehow manage to keep up in graphics?
JarredWalton - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
"Keep up" is being generous. Modern console games generally have worse geometry and the textures look like puke. Some elements look decent, and considering the age of the hardware they look fantastic, but really we've been holding back the quality of console ports for at least five years thanks to underpowered hardware.willis936 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Man look at those specs. There would be nothing stopping me from swapping one of those 770s,780s, or titans out for the 560Ti on my windows machine so I could go full streaming.A proper streaming protocol, application, and implementation has been attempted and failed at least half a dozen times in the past few years. Nvidia's solution is nice but you're really at the mercy of how well they play ball with game makers (ick). low latency otf compression, transmission, and decode. It doesn't seem very hard. Tons of gaming machines have unused IGPs. IGP accelerated compression is bloody fast (like 2 hour move 1080p movie @30fps in under a half hour fast). Wasn't this the entire raison d'etre for quicksync?
MADDER1 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Uhhh... I'm missing something. It sounds like it's cheaper to move my Windows PC with Steam to the living room unless:1. Is there some hardware discount buying from Steam?
2. Are there going to be local multiplayer games supported by this "console"?
3. Are there exclusive games that will only be on Linux versus Windows?
rabidkevin - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
This product is designed for a casual or non-techy gamer and not an enthusiast. This is just to put everything in a nice neat package. Grab your windows box and throw steamOS on it and then just order a steam controller. I've always preferred sitting at the PC to play a game instead of a couch but I'll throw steamOS on an older box and using it for streaming games when I feel like sitting in the living room.MADDER1 - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Ah... So really this is more like an "Apple" move. Just wrap it up nice & shiny =P Was really hoping with Valve we would get some extra software/hardware improvements or more competition to consoles.En1gma - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
"the 4310 has HD 4400 while the other two have HD 4600, but since they use GT2 and the max clock is 1.15GHz I’m not sure why Intel uses different model numbers"HD4400 and HD4600 use GT2 both, but HD4400 has only 16 active execution units, HD4600 has full-enabled GT2 with 20 active execution units
JarredWalton - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Where are you getting that information from? Everything I've seen says HD 4200/4400/4600 are all 20 EUs.En1gma - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
a little embarrassing but I'll have to send you to the search enginesfor example, there is a screenshot of gpu-z http://www.3dnews.ru/assets/external/illustrations... from russian review of new dual-core haswell
Guspaz - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Yes, bold move choosing the only discrete GPU company with usable Linux drivers for your Linux-based platform, who also happens to have a 61% marketshare...Mantle will provide a nice small performance boost to developers implementing it, but it's not going to make a big enough difference to shift the market much.
SlyNine - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Can you post your sources.. or is this just your opinion?Sueff - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
So an average user like me will have to stream windows games from an FX-6300/HD-7850 to an i7/Titan? Well, at least we can play L4D2 on a 4k TV. ;)To be honest, I think this streaming idea is kinda nice when you build a cheap HTPC. Are there any tools that already do this and how are the required specs (rasperry pie anyone)?
Death666Angel - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
There already are quite a few android Apps that allow you to stream games competently from your PC to the Android device. Just google "android remote gaming" and look at the first results. :)bigboy678 - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
im just confused as to why they chose nvidia for the steambox. amd gpus are going to be in all the next generation consoles so you would think valve would do the same so they have an even greater chance of 3rd party developers supporting steambox. also, hasnt nvidia's support for linux been less than stellar over the years compared to amd? im a little hesitant to trust this newsjwcalla - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
Unfortunately you have that switched. NVIDIA has the best Linux drivers and that's one of the primary reasons they were likely selected. AMD's Linux drivers are universally considered to be quite awful. Although AMD does have a separate open source driver that, by open source standards, isn't that bad, it's still subpar.HollyDOL - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Umm... these seem to be nice machines, but pairing it with 450W PSU? 4770K+Titan? Honestly, at peak load you'll be getting not so nice voltage characteristics, giving the machine less stability and some extra heat, not to mention it will sound like an angry vacuum cleaner. Happy switching PSU after 1 year usage... if it doesn't damage something else along. That setup would be healthy with 600 or 650W, definitely not 450W. Also... how many 450W PSUs will have 8+6 PCIe connectors available? Really hope they mean 450W+ and actual 450 is just for the lowest setup.Computer Bottleneck - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
"how many 450W PSUs will have 8+6 PCIe connectors available? "This one does....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
It also is 80+ Gold like the article says.
P.S. Keep in mind the SteamOS Console is only ~7 liters in displacement, so they are probably using a very small PSU.
HollyDOL - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Unfortunately that one puts you 5A short of minimal GTX780 recommended rating (12V@42A if I am not mistaken)... not counting in HDD/SSD and optical drive...Th-z - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
If Valve's motivation is to expand PC gaming, it needs to have systems with comparable price with next gen consoles while produce similar visual and frame rate, and let the flexibility of PC (e.g. Steam Controller, keyboard/mouse, etc.) as the selling point. Having powerful but expensive PC systems (the ecosystem has been there done that) won't be enough. Price is still the deciding factor. If Valve's motivation is to expand their own business, then it's just an alternative to existing PC gaming market.I have more faith in AMD's initiative to cut down software overhead in PC gaming as a cost effective way to expand PC gaming market. Less overhead means cheaper systems to provide equal experience. When you level the playing field in that area, then you can market other advantages of PC gaming, which can drive PC and components sales to non-enthusiast crowd. When you need a CPU that alone costs as much as a whole console just to overcome the software inefficiency, something wasteful going on.
Jumangi - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
I still don't see how this is positive for PC gaming Valve is specifying what we should use as PC gamers? Why just Nvidia Valve? You got some sort of deal with them? I just see Valve trying to make their own closed console like platform. We already have that with the Xbox and PlayStation. I have no interest in a 3rd one.ezridah - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Console players are going to be in for quite a shock when they get one of these and then try to play BF4 multiplayer with a controller. Since it's the PC version, they will be playing mostly against people with a keyboard and mouse, and the only way they'll get a kill is if the enemy is lagging out...ironargonaut - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
if the desire is to make this like a console, will they have some way to play multiplayer using the same box?I don't own a console and the only reason I would consider it is that it allows multiplayer w/o out having to buy 4 game dvds at $60 a pop. $200+ just to play multiplayer is extreme. Not everyone has high speed internet for gaming. Also, multiplayer on the same screen can be annoying, screen peeking etc., even with a 1080p 10ft projector screen.
I personally prefer to buy the old clearance games that allow lan play so me and the kids can play together.