Read more.Is it time to take SteamOS seriously?
Read more.Is it time to take SteamOS seriously?
I'm starting to understand the point of Steam machines now, after initially being a bit naive - I sorta get it now - it's about having the performance and modularity of a PC but with the overall experience of a traditional console.
However, even with that said, this thing is enormous! Where exactly is a machine this big supposed to go? It'd stick out like a sore thumb under my TV. Considering that the empty case alone is nearly 4 kilos, I'd be really nervous about even putting this thing [fully loaded with parts] on my glass TV stand. It's essentially a PC - only worse, in many ways. I could forgive most of that if it was any cheaper than a mid-range PC, but it really isn't.
save money, build yourself a windows pc, and have none of these problems.....
It's not that much bigger than an xbone is it? Google seems to think it's 4.4cm wider, 6.3cm deeper and 0.8cm higher. It's obviously a fair bit bigger than a PS4 and 'truck loads' bigger than a Wii U. It would be nice if it was smaller and if they'd used a higher end case too - it's roughly the same price as 3 x PS4s or 3 x XB1s - in fact you can currently buy a PS4, an XB1, a Wii U and a 3DS XL for the same price... Not that any of that is scan's fault - I think the component selection is quite good (would be nice to have a bigger SSD and maybe 16GB of RAM for future proofing purposes) and it isn't significantly more expensive than the bare component cost without the hassle (or fun, depending upon your perspective) of building it yourself, with some kind of testing and warranty to boot.
Also - it would be nice to have additional temperature measures in the review. Sure ~80c is normal for a GPU and 66c for a CPU is fine too but what about the system, PSU and SSD temperatures? How long does it take to come back down to idle temps from load? How long was the system run at load for? A pure HTPC will operate under low load most of the time so load temps aren't really that crucial but a gaming PC will be under load for several hours at a time which could mean temperatures for the whole system are a lot higher then you'd see from a short benchmark run. I say this as I've just built a gaming HTPC (out of fairly inappropriate older parts to be fair) which took some fettling - short term load tests were fine but a 4 hour gaming session got the northbridge temp up to 82c and the SSD up to 62c which is a bit higher than I am comfortable with. I had to try a few different cooling configurations (number of fans, direction of airflow, a bigger CPU heatsink that works better at low fan speeds to keep the noise reasonable, etc) to get temps and noise down and keep it stable.
Last edited by malfunction; 16-12-2015 at 07:12 PM.
£850 to play a handful of new games only ? Nah I'll pass.
Unless you dual boot with windows this thing is pretty much useless, as SteamOS only lets you play games that work under Linux, and while it is a good sized library, the AAA titles are few and far between.
£850 builds you an absolutely stonking gaming PC, I just don't understand why you'd go this route...gaming PCs aren't any more complicated than consoles anyway. Just have Steam launch into full screen mode!
And as for the review saying it's not getting into if 250gb is big enough..that's weird. You should totally get into it as it's a piddly sized drive. If someone is dropping £850 on this thing they're gonna be going for the bigger better games, not just casual gaming on 5 year old platformers, and that space will get devoured reet quick
Agree with Tunnah on this one. That's a lot of money for a single use games system whereas you could just buy a quiet PC and dual boot it.
Jon
SteamOS is a waste of time as it is just now, its got at least 5 years needed of getting Dev's to support it and them to refine it to a platform that does what they say.
I will bet you that Microsoft wont sit on their ass while that happens either.
I think I will stick with my Windows install for the time being.
First time I have read a review which pegged SteamOS vs Windows and tbh I never even thought about the possible performance differences. I am genuinely surprised that there is one and cannot see why Valve haven't sorted that issue out in the last two years and why anyone would want to use a limited OS on an awesome PC - there are other things to do on a PC besides gaming! I agree with Tunnah - launch Steam in FS mode!
It was always an iffy proposition until Vulkan comes out, but even then Vulkan will strengthen Windows 7 probably more than SteamOS.
I think that is the main thing here, if you have an existing Windows install then you are done and why bother with a steam machine.
If you are going to get another PC just for gaming and you are going to spend £1000 on it then the extra £80 for Windows isn't much.
I built a machine for playing around with SteamOS and it cost me £40 because most of the components were spares. At that point, £80 for Windows seems really bad value for money.
Edit to add: Perhaps Valve should have sunk some money into ReactOS http://sourceforge.net/projects/reactos/ so we could game like it was 1999
Another edit: So Scan let you add Windows for another £80. So to properly compare an £850 windows version vs £850 SteamOS version, under Windows you should substitute the GTX 970 for a GTX 960 to get price parity.
Last edited by DanceswithUnix; 16-12-2015 at 02:59 PM.
Bear in mind also the Scan's warranties are not worth the paper they are printed on - they will try anything to get out of the obligations.
The performance differences, i would guess, are largely down to poorly optimised drivers from AMD & Nvidia.
Because a Windows install isn't exactly maintenance free, something SteamOS is aiming to be (eventually), Windows 10 is going someway to providing a maintenance free version of Windows but it comes with a list of issues as long as my arm.
IMO SteamOS isn't a replacement for Windows yet, the key word there is yet as it's going to take time before it's a viable alternative, my hope is that it gets there in the next 4 years as hell would freeze over before i bought into Microsoft vision of future gaming on the PC.
It isn't the drivers, or at least on Nvidia it isn't the drivers as they are basically identical to the Windows drivers but on a more efficient OS so tend to benchmark ever so slightly faster. AMD drivers are slower than under Windows, how much depends on the card but 30% is about typical.
In this benchmark, it is because the games are native Windows games which have been adapted partly using translation libraries. That sucks, but it is what we have and that won' t change unless Vulkan takes off. That could be quite fast, but I won't hold my breath.
So hence my comment earlier, if you already have a Windows PC to game on then I can't see that many people spending so much money to buy something not as capable. For me, well I run Linux and just simply installed the Steam client. The fact I can do that is great, but I don't see me spending an extra £850 to get there.
IDK one way or the other so maybe being a Linux gamer yourself you're in a better position to answer than me, but i would guess Valve and SteamOS have been responsible for improving the gaming experience on Linux and that's only going to carry on, hopefully, eventually, Linux will be a viable alternative to Windows when it comes to gaming on a PC, we could defiantly do with an alternate choice in gaming PC OS.
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