Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

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I found out about this whole deal via the artist who did these characters – Junaid Chundrigar

Steam Machine

The Steam machine is valve’s simplified gaming PC. Sure, it might replace your console, but reading their information page, I personally feel this is more of a “you want to PC game but don’t know how to build or what to buy? Buy me and it’s done”.

It’s small, it’s elegant, and it has an info-laden customisable LED strip… (steam store)

Between the modest specs, and focus on small, quiet and clean, I reckon this could be a beautiful no-nonsense box for your loved ones, or a second machine to slip into the TV room. It certainly has me more excited than any of the regular consoles, but that could be because I am heavy into the steam economy with over 1000 games in my steam library.

It’s also important to note that steam has advised they will not lock down this PC – it’s yours. You can modify it as you see fit. Format it, install windows on it (I assume it comes with steamOS linux distro), turn it into your work PC, whatever you want. I love this.

But will it run farcry?

The CPU is billed as:

• “semi-custom” Zen 4 6 core / 12 thread
• up to 4.8ghz (i.e. boost clock)
• 30W TPU.

Looking at current AMD CPUs, That’s a Ryzen 5 7xxx series. Specifically the closest neighbour is going to be the 7600X3D or 7400F (thanks wikipedia!), but the TDP on those one is double what steam is advertising – Thus the semi-custom? Still, if this is a custom 7600X3D, we are looking at $300USD for that CPU. Perhaps we can guesstimate prices!

Altogether though, this CPU is decently specced for a mid-high level gaming PC, and if we compare to say, the PS5 cpu of eight cores at 3.5ghz boost clock, this steam machine is going to be more or less performant. I guess it will rely heavily on steamOS optimisation for games and proton (the steam software layer that games run on to mimic windows)

GPU:

• “semi-custom” AMD RDNA3
• 28 Compute Units
• 2.45GHz max sustained clock
• 110W TDP
• 8GB GDDR6 VRAM

That’s gonna be The Radeon RX 7xxx series. Closest comparison I see – thanks again to wikipedia – is the Radeon RX 7600M at the exact specs but 20w lower… interestingly almost covering the wattage increase on my CPU guess. Perhaps the cpu and gpu are part of a SoC? Perhaps when you factor in something like AMD APU, infinity fabric or smart access memory, the lines get blurred?

Regardless, the PS5 comparison we are using puts their GPU closer; RDNA 2 36CU, 2.23ghz, and 16gb of GDDR6. This Graphics Memory is important, from my own experience. Most modern games I use nowadays use all of my 8GB at 1440p.

Valve touts their machine will do “4K gaming at 60 FPS”, but importantly this requires AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution (FSR). So upscaling required, which as an FSR user myself, means ghosting. I believe that this is something that Playstation also struggles with, so my gut says this machine is gonna be on the level of our current console generation, an exciting prospect!

If we put the GPU at the price of the 7600 desktop unit, $269USD, tack on 16gb of GDDR5 at a rough estimate of $80USD, $100 for a 1TB NVME, and maybe $200 for the rest of the hardware, we get a total of $949USD. Using no specific metric apart from my gut feeling, I would say we are going to see the 1TB variant of this PC come in within $50 of this value. so either $899 or $999 USD. If it’s expected to be a loss leader – which I don’t see Valve doing – maybe $799. I’d be more inclined to expect $999 for something they advertise as “6x more power than the Steam Deck”.

Steam Frame

If Voldemort was on the back of my head, he’d love his new night mask… (steam store)

First, this thing is what I’m MOST excited for out of the new lineup. A headset with a dedicated wireless adapter! I’ve been using my meta quest less and less thanks to the burn-in I gave it from leaving it where the sun touched… I don’t even fully respect how much better the quest 2 or 3 have gotten, so I imagine this will be a huge jump!

Controllers look great, rather than the AB on left, XY on right, we have a joystick on both, and a D pad on the left, ABXY on right. Feels a lot like it’s gonna work with any standard controller format, and that’s what they’re aiming for, since the very first post of their hype page is talking about VR and non-VR gaming. I guess they want you to use this as an alternative big screen.

In terms of functionality, I remember the woes of Wi-Fi 5 and 6 and using apps to stream to my meta quest. It’s all built in nowadays, over your local wi-fi, but i remember the gold standard was a wi-fi 6 dongle with hotspot ability to connect your headset direct to your PC. That’s here now! direct wi-fi 6ghz connection by default means you will not be able to tell any latency, trust me on this one – it was not noticeable on my dodgy setup…

There is also onboard processing to play games standalone – it runs steamOS. I expect this will jump the price up, unfortunately. I would have preferred a purely streaming option, and they do advertise it as streaming first, but maybe if you… take your headset somewhere? you can play your favourite (I imagine low-spec) game? Perhaps if you wanted a steam deck but love VR, this is for you? The images show you can “2D” game in AR in a backyard, so yay.

Foveated rendering, pancake lenses, all the usual jazz you expect from premium headsets these days, but I’m happy there’s the Inter-pupillary distance adjustment – my family has varying eye distance and we all have our favourite settings.

Steam Controller

Oh Boy. I love my Steam Controller – it doesn’t look well looked after, and it’s a bit buggy these days – they did some changes in 2024 that means I need to install an older version of steam to use the configurator!

The new steam controller looks like it’s basically the steam deck minus the screen. Double everything – thumb sticks, 4-directional-buttons (yes I consider abxy to be directional buttons), track pads and underside buttons… I just imagine this will be me falling in love with the steam controller all over again!

I always forget discord’s logo is a controller until i see a controller with a face… (steam store)

This one has the batteries built in, and the wireless dongle is also a magnetic charger. I am keen to see how we will incorporate a 3d printed stand to take advantage of it, because the mag charger is at the top, so it’ll have to be a taller stand.

There’s also this capacitive “grip sense” on the controller grip area (for gyro control activation), and capacitive thumb sticks. They say it’s for motion control, but I can see programming extra buttons for thumbstick “soft-touch” and proper thumbstick clicking. Also I have never been into gyro controls, but if i am not holding my controller, I bet we could program that to press the escape button in a game – game pauses when you aren’t holding the controller would be a sweet lazy flex.

That said, this thing works with everything. Windows, Mac, Linux, Steam Deck, Phones (yes, it works over bluetooth and USB-C as well!), Steam Machine and the Steam Frame – with the latter able to determine the location of the controller via IR emitters in the controller… Perhaps the gyro is useful after all? I imagine driving a space ship with a controller and using the gyro as an imaginary spaceship steering wheel could be hella fun.

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Phew. And that’s my first tech blog post (also posted) on Patreon and Ko-Fi. What did you think? It’s just my blubbering of opinions, but I’m always open to listen to feedback (acting on it is another thing). I didn’t even cover the leaks about HLX (is it Alex 2? is it HL3? All we know is it has a lot of physics based gameplay!)

What about these steam devices? I learned a lot about them from reading other peoples takes, so I am interested in hearing yours. Leave a comment, tell me your thoughts, I will read every one.