No bad specs, only bad prices.
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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Steam Hardware
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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 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.
I can see unplugging the Raspberry Pi in the bedroom and replacing it with the Steam Machine.
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... 😬
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.
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.
They really dropped the ball with only 8gb vram, it's not like GDDR is expensive.
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.
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.
Another Philip appreciator, a see you're a person of culture as well!