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I haven’t heard many people talking about a key group here.
There are quite a few people out there who play the Deck handheld 95% of the time, so they rarely dock it… but they also aren’t out and about traveling with it.
They just play it in comfy spots around their house, without ever really hooking it up to a larger screen extendedly. There are probably quite a few of them talking in this thread.
For any of these people wanting a performance upgrade: Steam Machine is going to be HUGE, and much better than switching to a slightly more powerful handheld at nearly the same price point.
These people can hook the SM up to a TV to check on it alone if needed… but primarily they will locally stream from it to their Decks. And it’ll absolutely crush 60/70/90 FPS (the common max display rates on the Deck screens, depending on what flavor you have and whether or not you’re overclocking the LCD display) at 800p, with graphics cranked WAY up on a ton of games.
It’ll definitely be a fantastic era to be a household Deck gamer.
My steam deck is 95% docked gameplay. I love the ui, ux, cross saves, steam features, ability to play non steam games, and ease of use with the pile of controllers I’ve accreted over the years.
The same experience but it can run Expedition 33 at 1080p without looking like a framey disaster? Sign me up unless it’s ridiculously expensive. I’ve got no interest at all in buying one of the big 3’s DRM boxes, and building a PC for the living room is very expensive unless I’m willing to have it be a bigass tower. The cube is for meeeeeeee.
I built a similarly speced machine (from what I can tell) and it runs everything I throw at it on a 4k TV. I would have gladly bought Steam Machine instead even if it was more expensive.
What are your specs?
basically same CPU with RX 7700 and 32 gb of ram. I think Steam Machine is predicted to be a bit below 7700 with raw numbers but with optimizations etc it’ll probably be very close.
I’m very happy with this these specs though. Runs everything really well via steam’s proton on 4k and I use it as a home lab server (nextcloud etc.) and living room media server.
It sounds perfect for me. I didn’t want to pay for online gaming. I’m not into subscription services. I have a ton of games on Steam. I have been waiting for years for a good time to upgrade my gaming PC. Cheapest option was going to be $1,200. Pre built PC are garish and embarrassing looking. Windows is currently a dumpster fire. 6 times the power of a Stream Deck. Just want to play my games. Didn’t care about games that won’t play on it, there’s a always another game that will work.
Sold! (Please be $600 out less)
I’m betting closer to $800 or $900.
I mean, I find my Steam Deck powerful enough and this is, what, 6x over the Steam Deck?
Exactly. The Machine isn’t made for people with super high end rigs. It’s made for console gamers or people with an older rig. I don’t own a PC, but I thoroughly enjoy my Deck. Looking forward to pricing on the Machine and Frame.
I used to be a hardcore PC gamer, twenty years ago, but as the years went by I found that the costs just got silly. Graphics cards have cost silly money for several console generations now. However if there’s a common platform that’s good enough, I’d be interested.
I love my Steam Deck but a bit more power would be great for a few things (notably Fallout London).
I’d argue it’s also for people who want sleep and resume on a PC for that console experience. I have a 3070ti system, which is older and mid now but still smokes the steam machine, and I’ll be “downgrading” to this because I consider quick resume an upgraded experience. Most games I play don’t even need that power.
3070 Ti is still a surprisingly capable card. If you compare 3060 Ti, 4060 Ti and the 5060 ti to it, they are all really close with the 3070 Ti actually being the fastest. Gone are the days where an xx60 of a new generation was vastly faster than a 70 or even 80 of the previous one.
The major difference is VRAM, 8GB is to little little for 4k gaming, but it’s still perfectly fine at 1080 or 1440p, especially with some FSR/DLSS thrown in.
Yeah, I don’t really get why people complain about the 8gb VRAM. The GPU isn’t fast enough to push native 4k anyway and at lower resolutions 8gb is sufficient for gaming. I have a similar GPU in my PC and never had any issues with the 8gb in 1080p, and I suspect at 1440p it is also still fine.
Using 1440p, I’ve not had any major issues with 8GB. It has been a bottleneck that has forced me to turn some resolution/texture settings down though. Indiana Jones is an example that stands out for running poorly, but I’m not buying a new system for that game to run better.
I can see unplugging the Raspberry Pi in the bedroom and replacing it with the Steam Machine.
No bad specs, only bad prices.
Exactly. $500: worth it. $800: now you’re in an awkward middle ground. You can pay half of that for a mini PC with a 780M that has double the GPU power of a Steam Deck or pay a bit more to get a decent machine that can really do 4K on high or ultra.
I think somewhere close to $500 is around the zone they should target the base model. It’s in the console price zone. At that price, the specs are pretty decent.
Reading around, I have the idea it won’t be 500. Still, since they’ve purposely used “cheap” hardware to keep the prices down. I think that it will likely be less of 700.
Will i be able to run the following games with pretty high gfx settings?
Cyberpunk
Jedi fallen order and sequel
Baldurs gate 3
Clair Obscure
Star citizen (i know its a scam but i wanna fly around in spaceships)
Transport tycoon deluxeSee how they run on the Steam Deck and then consider the Steam Machine is apparently 6x more powerful.
Baldur’s Gate 3:
Clair Obscure:
Cyberpunk:
Jedi Fallen Order:
Jedi Survivor:
Transport Tycoon Deluxe:
Ah didnt think to check what the deck could do. Not sure what 6x more powerful means though but it looks like it will be sufficient for what i want to do
Ttd was a joke btw 😅
Well, from the Steam Deck tech specs page:
Processor
6 nm AMD APU
CPU: Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)
GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.6GHz (1.6 TFlops FP32) APU power: 4-15W
RAM 16 GB LPDDR5 on-board RAM (6400 MT/s quad 32-bit channels)
Then what we know about the Steam Machine, also from the tech specs page:
CPU Semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T up to 4.8 GHz, 30W TDP
GPU Semi-Custom AMD RDNA3 28CUs 2.45GHz max sustained clock, 110W TDP
RAM 16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM
Cyberpunk for sure will play well, as it was one of the games that testers were able to play on one during a preview event. I believe it’s the most demanding game as well, so the rest of your list should work fine as well.
They played it at 4K on ultra settings (with FSR on), and had playable framerates. At 1440p or 1080, you wouldn’t even need FSR.
I will say, Cyberpunk runs a lot better on the Deck than Clair Obscur does. Clair Obscur isn’t worth running on Deck IMO - frames drop below 30, hair and shadows are a horrible mess, and in the game’s first big cutscene that wasn’t an FMV it was so stuttery that it was making the music crackle. Completely ruins the game.
Nice! Id probably play on 1440p unless i get a new monitor before i could get my hands on one (my current monitor is acting up so that might happen)
It’s fine but ideally would have more vram. Depends on price of course.
I’m actually kinda glad it has only 8gb for an odd reason; I hope it encourages devs to optimize their games more so they aren’t locked out of the steam machine market.
I hope you’re right. Games have run like dogshit for at least the past 5 years or so, even with reasonably powerful hardware.
Unfortunately, I’m not very optimistic because of the Unreal Engine monoculture (except for a bunch of blessed indie games) in the gaining industry. It would most likely be Epic’s job to make their engine not perform like shit, which… 😬
I think we’ll still get unoptimized crap, but it may sway some studios to consider that lower-end market. We’ll never truly know how much of a difference it makes, but it will undeniably be another data point they’ll have to consider in terms of potential profit.
The new Indiana Jones game straight up couldn’t be played past the first level with 8gb of vram (and their forced ray-tracing made it require a beefier GPU to get playable framerates), and I’m always curious if that noticeably lowered sales compared to their projections by locking gamers with lower-end hardware.
Unfortunately, I’m not very optimistic because of the Unreal Engine monoculture
That is a setback, and I’m not sure how much can truly be done for a studio that opts for UE, other than limiting their game to an artstyle that requires a lower polycount, and perhaps reducing the amount of assets in areas like they used to do for older consoles, but I too doubt that’ll happen.
Valve have a lot of data on this, I’m sure 8GB is going to be substantially for most of the playable top 10
I think that data includes the prices for RAM, and the price point they’re hoping to sell it at. I don’t mind the idea of buying this to literally just put in my entertainment center. I wouldn’t even mind upgrading the RAM when it eventually comes down in price or I can save up for it.
But since I already have a steam deck equivalent handheld running Bazzite, I also already have a lot of the peripherals I’d want in order to make this useful for streaming or other services, so it’s not a huge barrier to entry for me. The form factor is what I’m looking for too. Without all the stupid LED’s and BS.
They really dropped the ball with only 8gb vram, it’s not like GDDR is expensive.
It recently really increase in price, which is probably why Valve doesn’t want to announce prices yet.
You can check the spot price of GDDR6 it’s nit that expensive. Also valve most likely secured their supply contract and final specs a while ago.
There is no excuses for this.
It needs to at least match console performance, aiming for 4K@30, maybe medium settings. 4K@60 would be ideal of course.
I don’t think they have a lot of interest in pursuing that market personally, I think the goal is to hit casual to average gamers. Kinda feel like they want to create an ecosystem and they’re going to leave the high end/pro market for other manufacturers to figure out.
I definitely don’t think they’re aiming for the high-end or pro market, but I also don’t think the average casual gamer is going to choose an unknown quantity that’s likely much more expensive than a console they already know works. That kind of risk is usually taken only by people who are more enthusiastic or more in the know, which doesn’t describe casual gamers.
Personally, I like the idea of it as a way to play my Steam library on my living room TV, much more conveniently than streaming, using long cables and Bluetooth devices, or lugging a heavy computer tower. It might also appeal to console gamers who want to get a computer but don’t know the first thing about them. The Steam Machine is a complete package that works more or less like the consoles they’re familiar with.
Before I got my steam deck, I was playing on a 2400g htpc. I’m sure this will be fine.
I’m happily playing with Intel HD 630 integrated graphics myself, though my taste in games doesn’t usually require a beefy GPU.
Another Philip appreciator, I see you’re a person of culture as well!
