Steam Machine prototype from iBuyPower

[BORTZ]

Is that a white PS4?

 

[Sakitoshi]

It's called frameskipping and that's not what's implied - it clearly says that the box will play games at 60FPS, the refresh rate of the monitor is static, it's always 60Hz. What you're saying only matters when the game runs at a rate much faster than the monitor is capable of displaying, for example when it's running 120FPS but the monitor is physically capable of only 60 refreshes, so you "see" 60 frames out of those 120, however the in-game logic works at a much faster pace.

he is refering to VPS(the internal speed of the game) vs FPS(the number of frames displayed).
you can have a game that runs at full speed but that looks like a slideshow because the GPU is bottlenecking and can't render all of the frames needed, but the CPU can run the game at the right speed. so you see the slideshow effect that everyone knows, a good example is when I play Borderlands 2 with physx enabled under a heavy fight on Caustic caverns, lots of things happening on screen and the FPS lower behind the safe 22 mark and I got a pretty slideshow full of corrosive acid, if you want to make it worse throw a corrosive or slag Hyperion grenade while facelocking an enemy and you'll see stones flying everywhere. but even with all that action happening the game still runs at full speed and the only the visual representation is what was failing.

 

[chartube12]

Technically wouldn't an bare bones OS use a lot less over all resources thus require less powerful hardware to get newer graphics? I mean that is basically what the PS4 and XB1 (as well as the original xbox) are. So I could see ibuypower's prototypes being close to the ps4/xb1. The only problem I see RIGHT NOW is games are made with direct x. Unless value as made an equivalent alternative that can be used in new games and patched into existing ones, then the SteamOS is going to have a smaller library then windows. I'm betting Value knows this and has probably created something as a direct x alternative that can be patched into many existing games.

 

[Gahars]

iBuyPower?

i-don't-Buy it.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Not sure I trust a company called iBuyPower to make quality products. But I guess it's nice to start seeing these surface so soon.

 

[Ashtonx]

Am i the only one who thinks steam logo looks like an upside down dildo from that perspective ? might be because of white color dunno.

 

[Foxi4]

Technically wouldn't an bare bones OS use a lot less over all resources thus require less powerful hardware to get newer graphics? I mean that is basically what the PS4 and XB1 (as well as the original xbox) are. So I could see ibuypower's prototypes being close to the ps4/xb1. The only problem I see RIGHT NOW is games are made with direct x. Unless value as made an equivalent alternative that can be used in new games and patched into existing ones, then the SteamOS is going to have a smaller library then windows. I'm betting Value knows this and has probably created something as a direct x alternative that can be patched into many existing games.

It's very true, a barebones OS does use much less resources which allows for, say, less memory or a weaker CPU, however it doesn't mean that the performance will magically increase. The advantage consoles have over PC is that the hardware is standardized. You're still going to waste some code on "finding out" whether the "Steambox" is AMD-based or Intel-based, if it's equipped with an NVidia GPU or an AMD GPU, on implementing NVidia-specific functionality and AMD-specific functionality etc. - the "Steamboxes" suffer from the same issues PC's do, the difference being that the OS has a much smaller footprint. There will be some performance increase due to a lesser number of background processes, but it won't be as big as in the case of consoles.

 

[Transdude1996]

Let's see, buy an Xbox One (quit your b****ing, that's the only other 8th gen console I want, I already have a Wii U) or buy a Steam Machine for the same price with even more power, which would be the better deal?

If this is even as powerful as they say, I may just last the next few years on nothing but a Wii U and a Steam Machine.

 

[Mario92]

Not sure I trust a company called iBuyPower to make quality products. But I guess it's nice to start seeing these surface so soon.

This exactly. If this company I have never heard of makes this then what can bigger names do?

Let's see, buy an Xbox One (quit your b****ing, that's the only other 8th gen console I want, I already have a Wii U) or buy a Steam Machine for the same price with even more power, which would be the better deal?

If this is even as powerful as they say, I may just last the next few years on nothing but a Wii U and a Steam Machine.

Even if Steam Machine was less powerful I would still get it. We are talking about games that you get with heavy discounts and that works with every PC and/or MAC you can access. If you get Xbone there's now only handful of games you can play and they are bit pricey.
Of course there are still that problem that not much games has Linux native port but as stated in here it should be easy to install regular windows dualboot with steam autobooting to big picture.

 

[Veho]

Can it run Windows?

 

[Sakitoshi]

Can it run Windows?

you can throw it through a window. does that count??

I'm still not convinced about the support, one thing about consoles is that you can be sure that you'll get tons of games in the future to support the purchase, but the Steam machine is just beginning and you can't be that sure about how many games would have. and because of the modular design it have you'll probably need to upgrade your machine to support latter titles, thing that not happen with consoles save the occasional add-on to play one or two worthless games.

 

[Maxternal]

Can it run Windows?

You could run Linux on a Wii ... doesn't mean you don't have to hack it for it to give you that option. (which I suspect is the case here, too.)

 

[chartube12]

iBuyPower?

i-don't-Buy it.

It is an over priced gaming machine builder website like alienware used to be. Tigerdirect, ebay and amazon sell premades from them. A few months ago they got bought out by a site called cyberpowerpc. The layout of the site was changed to match cyberpowerpc's and their deals are mostly crap now.

 

[The Catboy]

I am still meh about the look of the case.
The rest of the news is meh too for me, so far the only news I've liked out of this is that Steam OS is Linux based.

Can it run Windows?

Why would you want to do that?

 

[Foxi4]

Why would you want to do that?

Because for gaming purposes it's an infinitely better OS.

Also yes, you can.

 

[The Catboy]

Because for gaming purposes it's an infinitely better OS.

Also yes, you can.

And watch your resources go right out the Windows.
In all seriousness, doesn't that just defeat the purpose of buying a Steam box? Why not just buy a PC instead with Windows already installed on it?

 

[Foxi4]

And watch your resources go right out the Windows.

Uh-huh. For example, Ubuntu uses more-or-less 400MB RAM these days (on which SteamOS is based) for the OS alone while with Windows 8 it's around 300MB RAM.

Stop fearmongering, Catzboi, don't be a Linux nazi. I know that games are developed for Linux more often these days but for years on end Windows was and continues to be the primary target OS for developers and it's not going to change anytime soon.

Even with the Steambox and SteamOS on the horizon, Linux is still hipster.

 

[The Catboy]

Uh-huh. For example, Ubuntu uses more-or-less 400MB RAM these days (on which SteamOS is based) for the OS alone while with Windows 8 it's around 300MB RAM.

Stop fearmongering, Catzboi, don't be a Linux nazi. I know that games are developed for Linux more often these days but for years on end Windows was and continues to be the primary OS target for developers and it's not going to change anytime soon.

A lot of what consumes your resources with Ubuntu is Unity, Ubuntu based distros like Bohdi takes up very little resources compared to normal Ubuntu.

It still seems pointless to buy a Steambox, then install Windows on it. It's like buying an iPhone to install Android on it.

 

[Foxi4]

A lot of what consumes your resources with Ubuntu is Unity, Ubuntu based distros like Bohdi takes up very little resources compared to normal Ubuntu.

It still seems pointless to buy a Steambox, then install Windows on it. It's like buying an iPhone to install Android on it.

Don't bring Unity into this - when Unity kicks in, resource usage jumps up to 1GB and beyond. To be fair though, Windows's resource usage also fluctuates and it is higher than Ubuntu's on average, so hey!

I don't see why using a basic Windows installation without all the unnecessary crap like Hyper-V, the printer spooler etc. with installed Steam is any worse than running SteamOS, especially when you want to play Windows games that do not have a Linux build and are too complex to be ran through WINE.

 

[The Catboy]

Don't bring Unity into this - when Unity kicks in, resource usage jumps up to 1GB and beyond.

I don't see why using a basic Windows installation without all the unnecessary crap like Hyper-V, the printer spooler etc. with installed Steam is any worse than running SteamOS, especially when you want to play Windows games that do not have a Linux build and are too complex to be ran through WINE.

Yeah, Unity is pure horse shit.

My issue is that why not just buy a PC? It just kinda perplexes me. I guess to each their own though.