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Steam Machine

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam Machine

#141
post #6

>RAM 16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM Hmm. Not that it is big deal, but I would be somewhat worried about true longevity with the VRAM. Not sure if SteamOS helps there, but on PC some new titles are going over the 8GB VRAM.

Games publishers/developers are going to have to wind in their necks a little. Whilst memory is abundant it's also still quite expensive. We should still be aiming for efficiency and the chances are 16gb+ are in the minority here. Fact is, the more VRAM and compute you demand the smaller your customer-base becomes.

I've played many games with 8GB VRAM* and will do so for the forseeable. If that's not enough, I am not a customer. Simple as.

The truth is, there is going to be a massive motivation with the likes of Steam Deck/Machine to actually make titles that are optimised and perform well within their hardware parameters. It's money you won't want to ignore.

*One example was Silent Hill remake on PC, which used the unreal engine. It was optimised beautifully and ran without visual glitches and stutters even with the highest graphic demands on a 8GB RTX

Re: Steam Machine

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a issue of critical mass. With the continued growth of steamos, steamdeck, and linux as a game platform, eventually it will pull over support.

I have to wonder if it's possible to ever even guarantee something that can't be trivially bypassed on Linux - Windows, sure, it's possible with DMA, but it's damn hard. On Linux you could just compile a spoofed kernel or a DKMS module or something.

you can make a signed readonly linux installation, and restrict your games to it. this would be like "support steamos but not linux".

Or deliver the game as a container format, like snap or appimage to bypass most of the system.

Or demand the installation of a kernel driver like they do on windows.

or just give up on kernel level aticheat since they're been breached all the same, just as windows are restricting their power too.

easy-anticheat has a linux version. Developers have to disable the support intentionally.

Re: Steam Machine

#143
post #6

>RAM 16GB DDR5 + 8GB GDDR6 VRAM Hmm. Not that it is big deal, but I would be somewhat worried about true longevity with the VRAM. Not sure if SteamOS helps there, but on PC some new titles are going over the 8GB VRAM.

It's a very low end Radeon 7000 series. It's absolutely incapable of the highest texture quality and rendering resolutions that need more than 8GB of VRAM. You'll likely never go above 1080p on this card (1440p is going to be rough based on benchmarks of the existing low end 7000 series). There's absolutely no reasonable way to use more than 8GB of VRAM on this card.

Even modern low-end GPUs should have more than enough fill rate for high-res textures. The texture quality setting in games is usually not affecting performance at all until VRAM runs out.

Re: Steam Machine

#145
post #17

> HDMI 2.0 The HDMI Forum yet again rearing it's ugly head by continuing to block GPU manufacturers from implementing HDMI 2.1 in the Open Source drivers

Yup. This really needs to be fixed. There have been on-going bug reports on it for years. AMD just needs to move the hdmi 2.1 stuff behind a firmware binary blob already like NVIDIA does. It's so annoying not having full quality HDMI. It's the only think keeping me from using Linux on my current gaming PC that is hooked exclusively up to my TV... Either that or TV's need to start having Display Port.

Re: Steam Machine

#147
post #3

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamframe [1] > Steam Frame is a PC, and runs SteamOS powered by a Snapdragon® 8 Series Processor. With 16GB of RAM, Steam Frame supports stand-alone play on a growing number of both VR and non-VR games without needing to stream from your PC. So Steam + Proton works on aarch64? Is this something already available/supported, or is this an announcement? [1] Steam Frame, which is the…

I'm more confused that it's running SteamOS which is supposedly Arch based, but arch doesn't officially support ARM. You have to use the ArchLinuxARM distro for that, which is less maintained. They got to be doing something off label for that.

> arch doesn't officially support ARM

Doesn't really mean much to Valve as SteamOS vendor:

- linux kernel supports aarch64 just fine

- user space supports aarach64 just as fine

- Valve provides runtime for games (be it via proton or native linux), so providing aarch64 builds is up to them anyway

The main point of ArchLinuxARM is providing compatible binaries, which isn't something hard to do in-house.

Re: Steam Machine

#148

In this big hardware refresh, honestly most excited about finally getting a new steam controller [1], which feels like it might finally give us a better, more extensible standard than the extremely outdated XInput protocol (which still doesn't even support motion controls) [1] https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamcontroller

The trackpads are a deal breaker for me

They should have put them just above the joysticks, like the PS5 controller

Better, they should have made them detachable with a magnet, similar to the Switch JoyCon's system, what a missed opportunity

Re: Steam Machine

#149
post #5
post #3

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamframe [1] > Steam Frame is a PC, and runs SteamOS powered by a Snapdragon® 8 Series Processor. With 16GB of RAM, Steam Frame supports stand-alone play on a growing number of both VR and non-VR games without needing to stream from your PC. So Steam + Proton works on aarch64? Is this something already available/supported, or is this an announcement? [1] Steam Frame, which is the…

Valve has been quietly working on integrating the FEX x86 emulator into Proton for a while, and it's official now. https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/gaming-headsets/han...

I believe this work is a continuation of the work the asahi linux people did to get games working on M-series macs. It seems Alyssa Rosenzweig works at valve as a contractor. Super cool work. Some seriously talented folks.
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