This article is quite correct. I ended up liking the idea so well that I just got an off brand mini PC with a Ryzen 7 8745HS for $380. The Steam Machine is likely to be like $800 and have a GPU that is 2-3x faster, but possibly a weaker CPU with 6 instead of 8 Zen 4 cores.
Either way, I couldn’t see paying double for couch gaming with half-assed 4k when 1080p upscaled looks fine to my eyes from the couch and a little more money than the Steam Machine would buy a 5080 to replace my aging 3070 and do real 4k / VR on ultra with raytracing that looks great up-close. Unless Valve comes in at like $500 for the Steam Machine, it’ll be sitting in this awkward middle ground where it’s fairly pricey, yet underpowered.
There is a Framework-specific Bazzite image so I’m not sure why they were using the same one that goes on Steam Deck…
The benefit of Steam Machine:
- HDMI-CEC
- Wake on Bluetooth
- Sleep/Resume
- Background updates
- Efficiency/Noise/Heat
Actually supporting HDMI-CEC is such a big thing because it makes it the perfect HTPC machine for Libreelec. No more need for separate remote to control your 4k HDR media player!
HDMI-CEC gonna be so fucking cool!
Console but PC
Exactly. Best of both.
I’ve been running Bazzite on a Framework Desktop 64gb and it’s a beast of a little machine.
Honestly way more expensive than I would ever recommend for anyone who’s using it solely for gaming. You could make something just as good, but bigger, for less. Or you could build something good enough and small for way less, depending on the performance you’re trying to hit. But if you’re in that sweet spot where you want a lot of power in a tiny package, it won’t disappoint. You’d be hard pressed to find anything as close in performance and size for a lesser price.
Plus side, you got a lot of vram if you wanna play with local LLMs.
It’s looking like the steam machine is gonna hit that sweet spot of being ‘good enough’ while being small and probably fairly priced.
Framework Desktop 64gb
I wonder how that compares to my mini-ITX Ryzen 5700x3D/9070XT/64GB system. I guess yours is even smaller and better at running LLMs due to the unified memory, but mine is probably cheaper and better at gaming.
I think it’s good the machine is not super powered. If people stop buying the latest gpus so often, then devs will need to optimize their games or target weaker hardware.
Some games have a steamdeck setting which I love.
I think there’s people who have gaming as a hobby, and people who have speccing and building a gaming PC as a hobby.
And Valve was never going to sell anything to the PC Hobby crowd, because they get their fun from squeezing every dime and finding the absolute best bang for the buck or whatever.
So I think it’s sensible for Valve to be like “yeah, we’re just going to make a pretty good machine for people who don’t care about how much VRAM it has”.
And the comments of every review and YouTube video will be full of people complaining about how you can get so much more for so much less, and that it’s dogshit, but that’s because the people on those sites are the hobby people.
But that won’t necessarily translate into selling like hotcakes. I hope it does, for several reasons, but only time will tell if there’s enough people in the market for that kind of machine that aren’t the hobby people.
A guy at work bought a 5080 and he plays FPSs. lol
I don’t get it.
I think it’s good the machine is not super powered. If people stop buying the latest gpus so often, then devs will need to optimize their games or target weaker hardware.
I really want this to be the case.
The big benefit of Strix Halo is low power draw, low heat, compact size, and low noise.
It sounds like he just needs one of these
I have one almost identical to this for my bazzite machine and it works great
What about
For anyone looking at these. Be a bit careful with getting one that is poor quality. I had one and there was sometimes lag and you would end up double pressing keys and stuff.
It was a completely different model than the one in the picture. But I wanted to leave this warning so you read reviews first.
Hey me too, but mine has an intel arc gpu on bazzite
That’s not a real laptop.
I said it’s not real!
Neither are birds, or the voices in my head
