
Steam Machines – Prototype Details - mrt0mat0
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse#announcements/detail/2145128928746175450
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breckinloggins
I can't wait to hear more about how they'll lessen the "fragmentation"
confusion with different Steam Machines. Perhaps they'll do a tier system like
"Steam Machine Bronze / Silver / Gold / Platinum" and then games can be rated
"Gold+" or something.

Or maybe they'll have a minimum spec that gets bumped every 2 years, so a game
can say "runs on all Steam Machines (2014+)".

But it's clear there's going to have to be _some_ way of "tranching" the
different hardware levels, because nothing will kill this idea faster than a
general public who's heard that you can never be quite sure if a game you buy
will run on your particular Steam Machine.

But then I realize something: where do people get Steam games _from_? The
Steam store online! I'm pretty sure they'll build in the equivalent of the
windows performance score that can be sent to Steam's servers, and they'll
simply be able to show you the games that will run best on your machine and
hide games that simply won't run at all.

Thoughts? I think that, as with the controller, this is a _really_ important
aspect of getting this whole big idea to work.

~~~
recuter
Umm, how is me not even being able to see Half-Life 3 when I visit the Steam
store on my Steambox supposed to make me feel better when friends with more
powerful PC's and newer Steamboxen can enjoy it just fine?

No. And none of this tier stuff either. The point of the Steamboxen is to kill
the windows dependency of games, probably why they are future proofing them so
much. They'll last 3-5 years in their present iteration and at that point it
will be moot.

~~~
breckinloggins
> Umm, how is me not even being able to see Half-Life 3 when I visit the Steam
> store on my Steambox supposed to make me feel better when friends with more
> powerful PC's and newer Steamboxen can enjoy it just fine?

OK, you don't have to hide it, but there still needs to be some kind of guide
about how games will play on your Steam Machine.

This is not a big deal right now, but what about in, say, 6 years? You have an
original Steam Machine and a new game JUST came out. It doesn't run on your
Steam Machine because yours doesn't have a Whatsit Quantum Coprocessor.
Shouldn't the Steam UI, you know, _let you know that_ before you go about
buying and downloading that 30GB game??

And I don't want tiers, either, but Valve did say they'd have something to say
about this; I'm simply speculating about what it could be.

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RokStdy
"..Shouldn't the Steam UI, you know, let you know that before you go about
buying and downloading that 30GB game??.." Yeah, wouldn't that be the point?
It seams like Steam wants to be a platform, and the point of the steambox
would be to own your living room (as well as your computer room).

I would think that the Steam environment will do a lot of your thinking for
you. It'll check your hardware, suggest upgrades (since the boxes will
evidently be upgradable), etc...

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devx
I initially thought it would be better to go with Nvidia to provide some kind
of "competitive advantage" over the AMD-based consoles, but that's going to be
hard to do when PC's tend to be unsubsidized, and when the same level of
hardware is actually weaker because of the DirectX/OpenGL overlays.

Then, after I saw AMD announcing the Mantle API, I realized, it would be a
_perfect match_ for the Steam Machines, to get some of that console-level
performance for more or less the same price. John Carmack agrees that
Valve+Mantle would be a deadly combination:

[http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-mantle-api-xbox-one-
pla...](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-mantle-api-xbox-one-
playstation-4-john-carmack,24434.html)

Mantle is the _future of gaming machines_. It will not create lock-in, because
both Nvidia and Intel will scramble to create something similar, or even
compatible with AMD's API (which will be open soon), and what this will lead
to eventually is a _reset_ of standardized overlays for GPU hardware, that
will support AMD, Nvidia, Intel, and probably even ARM GPU's, but with much
lower overhead than DirectX and OpenGL.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/7371/understanding-amds-
mantle...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/7371/understanding-amds-mantle-a-
lowlevel-graphics-api-for-gcn)

[http://semiaccurate.com/2013/09/30/amds-mantle-biggest-
chang...](http://semiaccurate.com/2013/09/30/amds-mantle-biggest-change-
gaming-decade/)

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johnbellone
I'm actually more interested in the enclosure and its exciting to see that
Valve is providing the CAD so that we can effectively fabricate our own. It'd
be awesome if they just sold the enclosures and let us put our own hardware
in. Nevertheless this is fucking brilliant.

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mladenkovacevic
I am curious about the enclosure they've built to minimize heat and noise
coming from the GPU and the 450W PSU.

A couple of years ago I built a small AMD Llano based computer using a small
enclosure sold by Mini-Box and an 80W fanless Pico Power Supply also sold on
the site.

Case - [http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-
enclosure](http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-enclosure)

PSU - [http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-80](http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-80)

It is much quieter than an Xbox 360, but also can't play any XBox level games
on it (I use it as an HTPC). I'd be curious to see what I can do today with
the same amount of power using Haswell, some 28nm GPU and SteamOS.

~~~
mmagin
Hopefully it's a big advance over most of what's out there. Thermal design on
the PC-assembled-from-standard-parts seems to often leave a lot to be desired.
Folks like Dell or HP do a little better in their 'workstation' lines, but
aside from that, desktop PC thermal design tends to be ignorant of the
assembled system as a whole. On top of it, nobody seems to understand that
these things should have removable and washable dust filters. It's unrealistic
to expect the average user to keep it in a low-dust environment and it's even
more unrealistic to expect them to open it up and clean the dust out.

~~~
asdfs
I would truly love to see a new form factor appear that's designed for large
heatsinks that vent directly to the outside. It's always seemed terribly odd
to me that GPUs often consume more power than CPUs, yet have tiny heatsinks
and loud blower fans.

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StavrosK
I don't even know why I'm interested in this: I have neither the time nor the
desire for games any more. The only game I play is DOTA2, and I want to quit
it.

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officemonkey
I've played DOTA2 twice, and I have absolutely no idea of what's going on or
how to play. What's the big deal anyway?

~~~
winslow
The learning curve is very steep. I'm still learning how to play it after 1+
years with it. For me, the big deal is that it is a new genre (for me) and I
also love that it forces teamwork and strategy with players that play a
'support' role which their sole goal is to help a 'carry' win his lane. Check
out highlights of Dendi from Navi in Dota 2 International 2013.

It's basically a game of chess.

~~~
StavrosK
It's not really a game of chess, it's more like a game of basketball. There's
not very much calm, focused thought, but there is skill and strategy.

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Namrog84
Link doesn't appear to be pointed at anything relevant? Was it taken down?
Link or mirror please? Thanks!

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corresation
Those specs are very high-end (cue someone dismissing that compared to their
triple-SLI, etc) and it is hard to imagine that is at all commercially
credible: that would be a $1200+ machine. The GTX780 alone is $700, the Titan
$1200. Add that the notion of a living room media/gaming box using up to 450w
seems oddly backwards.

After all of the talk about leveraging the AMD successes with the game
consoles -- and about smoothing ports -- surprised to see nvidia only.

~~~
Aldo_MX
This is not necessarily bad, most hardcore PC gamers already have a setup
similar to this one.

At this point if I have to be skeptical about something is about how well the
hardware will work with the OS considering the reputation nvidia has with
Linux...

~~~
corresation
Hardcore gamers are far too small of a market, however. I really had hope that
Valve would do some serious system integration that would you get you much
more for less (effectively what the shortly to be released consoles do. PC
wise they are a fantastic amount of power), but instead it's just apparently
the same PC market, with the only novelty being the shape of the box.

~~~
xymostech
Isn't the point of Valve's console that they want to get SteamOS out to people
to test, not because they actually want to sell it to people? It looks to me
like they're shipping with a variety of system configurations (one of them
even has an i3 in it, certainly not a hardcore processor) and they're seeing
how each of them holds up. They're going to leave it to other companies to
actually make some real consoles (they might release their own too, but
they're not the only ones who can), and one of those companies certainly could
perform the system integration that you'd like to lower the cost.

The point of SteamOS is that it's open, and anyone can make them (and people
other than Valve can sell them). If they become insanely popular, I'm sure
that someone will jump on integration to sell a cheaper console.

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mrt0mat0
Goes to show you how the OS is 40% of the cost of a computer. take that away
and you can get great hardware for the same price.

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corresation
Where are you getting that from? There is nothing at all about price, and we
all know that the OEM cost of Windows is ~$50. Valve is going with Linux
because it decouples them from being vulnerable to fits of Microsoft, not
because that $50 whole system price somehow makes a $1200 nvidia Titan less
expensive.

~~~
BlackDeath3
$1200 Titan?

