Steam Machines – Prototype Details

I can&#x27;t wait to hear more about how they&#x27;ll lessen the &quot;fragmentation&quot; confusion with different Steam Machines. Perhaps they&#x27;ll do a tier system like &quot;Steam Machine Bronze &#x2F; Silver &#x2F; Gold &#x2F; Platinum&quot; and then games can be rated &quot;Gold+&quot; or something.<p>Or maybe they&#x27;ll have a minimum spec that gets bumped every 2 years, so a game can say &quot;runs on all Steam Machines (2014+)&quot;.<p>But it&#x27;s clear there&#x27;s going to have to be <i>some</i> way of &quot;tranching&quot; the different hardware levels, because nothing will kill this idea faster than a general public who&#x27;s heard that you can never be quite sure if a game you buy will run on your particular Steam Machine.<p>But then I realize something: where do people get Steam games <i>from</i>? The Steam store online! I&#x27;m pretty sure they&#x27;ll build in the equivalent of the windows performance score that can be sent to Steam&#x27;s servers, and they&#x27;ll simply be able to show you the games that will run best on your machine and hide games that simply won&#x27;t run at all.<p>Thoughts? I think that, as with the controller, this is a <i>really</i> important aspect of getting this whole big idea to work.

I initially thought it would be better to go with Nvidia to provide some kind of &quot;competitive advantage&quot; over the AMD-based consoles, but that&#x27;s going to be hard to do when PC&#x27;s tend to be unsubsidized, and when the same level of hardware is actually weaker because of the DirectX&#x2F;OpenGL overlays.<p>Then, after I saw AMD announcing the Mantle API, I realized, it would be a <i>perfect match</i> 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:<p><a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-mantle-api-xbox-one-playstation-4-john-carmack,24434.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tomshardware.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;amd-mantle-api-xbox-one-pla...</a><p>Mantle is the <i>future of gaming machines</i>. It will not create lock-in, because both Nvidia and Intel will scramble to create something similar, or even compatible with AMD&#x27;s API (which will be open soon), and what this will lead to eventually is a <i>reset</i> of standardized overlays for GPU hardware, that will support AMD, Nvidia, Intel, and probably even ARM GPU&#x27;s, but with much lower overhead than DirectX and OpenGL.<p><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7371/understanding-amds-mantle-a-lowlevel-graphics-api-for-gcn" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.anandtech.com&#x2F;show&#x2F;7371&#x2F;understanding-amds-mantle...</a><p><a href="http://semiaccurate.com/2013/09/30/amds-mantle-biggest-change-gaming-decade/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;semiaccurate.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;09&#x2F;30&#x2F;amds-mantle-biggest-chang...</a>

I&#x27;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&#x27;d be awesome if they just sold the enclosures and let us put our own hardware in. Nevertheless this is fucking brilliant.

I am curious about the enclosure they&#x27;ve built to minimize heat and noise coming from the GPU and the 450W PSU.<p>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.<p>Case - <a href="http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-enclosure" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mini-box.com&#x2F;M350-universal-mini-itx-enclosure</a><p>PSU - <a href="http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-80" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mini-box.com&#x2F;picoPSU-80</a><p>It is much quieter than an Xbox 360, but also can&#x27;t play any XBox level games on it (I use it as an HTPC). I&#x27;d be curious to see what I can do today with the same amount of power using Haswell, some 28nm GPU and SteamOS.

I don&#x27;t even know why I&#x27;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.

Link doesn&#x27;t appear to be pointed at anything relevant? Was it taken down? Link or mirror please? Thanks!

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&#x2F;gaming box using up to 450w seems oddly backwards.<p>After all of the talk about leveraging the AMD successes with the game consoles -- and about smoothing ports -- surprised to see nvidia only.

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.