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Steam Machine Teardown

ifixit.com

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Re: Steam Machine Teardown

#51

Post by mikestew »

ep103 wrote: post #47
mikestew wrote: post #3

$500 video card, huh? After complaining that $500 for the XBone was a little pricey (I bought one anyway), building my own got just a tad less appealing. I will be interested to see how much volume pricing brings down the final price at release.

Valve released a large variety of steamboxes for this beta test, so they could test different hardware. Some of the boxes had 1k cards in them, some had cards on the lower end of the range. Don't get too attached to the 500$

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I have not been following all that closely, despite having an interest, and took the iFixIt build to be the blessed standard to be followed by all others.

Re: Steam Machine Teardown

#52

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

User1398 wrote: post #19
pekk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will need one to mine Valve's hatcoins

Although we're joking, I wonder if Bitcoin would be far more successful if it originated within a platform like Steam. Let's say Steam replaced their wallet with Hatcoins. They allow users to add Hatcoins from their bank account, send Hatcoins to other users, purchase hats, and Steam games at a 2% discount if using Hatcoins during 2014. Valve runs the main Hatcoin exchange, and you'll have millions of people using th…

tencent already tried this before it was banned by the government.

Re: Steam Machine Teardown

#53

Post by lectrick »

I hope 3 things happen

1) SteamOS is very successful along with Steam Machine

2) Windows is knocked out as a gaming platform

3) SteamOS users will be less annoying than Xbox and PS3 users

Re: Steam Machine Teardown

#54

Post by xhrpost »

geetee wrote: post #20
pekk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point of bringing that up here?

The Phantom was taking the same approach pretty much. Off the shelf PC parts and digital copies of games. Just interesting to see how much and how little changes in a decade.

I remember going to E3 some ten years ago with friends and we couldn't stop laughing at the Phantom. IIRC, they were either going to charge per minute played or the games were going to be rent-only or something of that nature. It just seemed more like "how can we possibly exploit more money from players" versus Steam's idea of changing the way we do gaming. So I would personally argue that Steam is significantly different.

Re: Steam Machine Teardown

#55

Post by freehunter »

swashboon wrote: post #48
Narishma wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are living-room PCs, not consoles.

I always laugh when I see 'PC' because I take it at is literal meaning - 'Personal Computer' - which always makes me wonder what about apple products, consoles, or even mobile phones makes them not either personal or computers. They all seem to be computers, they all seem pretty personal to me...

PC is a holdover from the popular IBM Personal Computer running Microsoft's PC DOS (later MS-DOS). IBM made PC a brand name in direct competition with Apple. When other companies started copying IBM, they made IBM PC Compatible devices and peripherals, generally with an x86 processor. By the 90's, "IBM PC Compatible" meant "an x86 processor running Windows", still in direct competition with Apple.

So even though Apple uses x86 processors and technically it is a personal computer, "PC" still refers to the old brand name that is synonymous with Wintel. Apple has personal computers, Microsoft has Personal Computers.

Re: Steam Machine Teardown

#56

Post by Recoil42 »

bicknergseng wrote: post #23
geetee wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Phantom was taking the same approach pretty much. Off the shelf PC parts and digital copies of games. Just interesting to see how much and how little changes in a decade.

Or how different doing the same approach can be with a successful, multibillion dollar company driving it.

Infinium Labs and the Phantom had a lot more wrong going for them than not being a successful, multibillion dollar company.

Remember Penny Arcade's comic? http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/01/23

Re: Steam Machine Teardown

#57

Post by freehunter »

chroem wrote: post #43
lambda wrote: post #21

This is the first console I've ever been interested in actually buying. I've always refused to buy devices that don't allow you to write and install your own software (I don't count hacks on them, so this is the first console that's actually open enough to meet my criteria. The nice thing is that this makes a pretty good off the shelf home theater PC even if I never actually use it for gaming.

I'm curious, what phone do you use?

Android fits the bill for what he's described. It's doubtful that everything in a SteamBox is completely open source (including graphics drivers and firmware on various hardware), so even though Android isn't 100% open source, it's roughly on par with the openness of a common Linux desktop.

Re: Steam Machine Teardown

#58

Post by officemonkey »

User1398 wrote: post #19
pekk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will need one to mine Valve's hatcoins

Although we're joking, I wonder if Bitcoin would be far more successful if it originated within a platform like Steam. Let's say Steam replaced their wallet with Hatcoins. They allow users to add Hatcoins from their bank account, send Hatcoins to other users, purchase hats, and Steam games at a 2% discount if using Hatcoins during 2014. Valve runs the main Hatcoin exchange, and you'll have millions of people using th…

I would definitely sell off my TF2 hat collection if I could legitimately buy something else with the proceeds (even if it was only other Steam games.)

Re: Steam Machine Teardown

#59

Post by cma »

joezydeco wrote: post #50
bicknergseng wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or how different doing the same approach can be with a successful, multibillion dollar company driving it.

Are we talking about the Steambox or the Xbox?

Xbox One has unified memory with the GPU, which you can't get on PC (aside from via integrated intel graphics).

Re: Steam Machine Teardown

#60

Post by ChuckMcM »

freehunter wrote: post #55
swashboon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always laugh when I see 'PC' because I take it at is literal meaning - 'Personal Computer' - which always makes me wonder what about apple products, consoles, or even mobile phones makes them not either personal or computers. They all seem to be computers, they all seem pretty personal to me...

PC is a holdover from the popular IBM Personal Computer running Microsoft's PC DOS (later MS-DOS). IBM made PC a brand name in direct competition with Apple. When other companies started copying IBM, they made IBM PC Compatible devices and peripherals, generally with an x86 processor. By the 90's, "IBM PC Compatible" meant "an x86 processor running Windows", still in direct competition with Apple. So even though Appl…

"PC is a holdover from the popular IBM Personal Computer running Microsoft's PC DOS ..."

Of course it is, and much of what is sold with that moniker today is really more of an entertainment appliance than "computer." When my daughter was 5 or 6 and being told to "dial 9-1-1 for emergencies" she asked me "Why do they call it dialing?"

So the interesting thing from the perspective of the Steam box is this is an entertainment console with a bunch of details about how the insides work. I'm sure that 95% of the people who buy it will have the exact same experience they would have had if they bought and Xbox One or PS4, and the other 5% will have a lot of fun making it do amazing things and not have to worry about getting sued or arrested for it [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Ame...

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