Hardware Expectations For Valve's Steam Box

[Pawlerson]

So you didn't notice anything? Ok, let's put it this way:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/...in-tomb-raider

I just got the game and are happy to have inferior AMD hardware :P

I have used Catalyst and this is utter shit. I wasn't able to play UT2k4, because of stuttering. With Open Source drivers it worked fine. The best choice is Nvidia.

[duby229]

I'm pretty sure there will be a steam box for everyone. For those of you wanting nvidia, you'll get one. For those of you wanting AMD, you'll get one too. Yes steam is going to have its reference, but hardware vendors will be able to release what they think is going to satisfy there customers. It's quite obvious that some people prefer nvidia and others amd. Something will be made for everyone.

[curaga]

There's no reason they couldn't do a quad-A15 + discrete GPU from AMD or Nvidia, it would have plenty of power.

But I expect it will be x86 due to the legacy catalog.

[nightmarex]

There's no reason they couldn't do a quad-A15 + discrete GPU from AMD or Nvidia, it would have plenty of power.

But I expect it will be x86 due to the legacy catalog.

Some of the new ARM chips are getting scary powerful for low power mobile. Just that if you're going to spend a buck on a chip you would want one that is better for desktop/laptop because this thing is going to be plugged in right? Mobile chips are mind blowing but not compared to even modest chips in the desktop arena.

[atmartens]

They'll use an AMD APU. It has the best balance of CPU performance vs GPU performance and is priced competitively. Remember, they are on "Valve time," which means that they will have ample time to work out driver issues.

[AlbertP]

Some of the new ARM chips are getting scary powerful for low power mobile.

Powerful for the low resolutions that mobile devices use indeed, but this Steam Box will likely be often connected to Full HD TVs.

Also the article mentions Optimus, but I don't think the Steam Box will use that, because: Optimus is now only used in laptops because of battery life. Small-sized desktop systems and thin all-in-ones, do not have Optimus even if they are using an NVIDIA mobile GPU. It does not improve battery life in devices that have no battery, and it won't magically make the device much cooler; the cooling system needs to be able to cool the NVIDIA GPU at full load anyway so it's certainly powerful enough to keep an NVIDIA GPU cool in its lowest level.

[Medallish]

That is an experience I don't share, that is for sure!

Thanks for that random forum posts of fanboys complaining. I've had both cards, and in my time I've had more nVidia driver issues than AMD driver based issues, but because I don't buy both cards at the same time, (that would be insanity) I don't claim that nVidia's drivers suck. Funny enough at work I've seen tons of nVidia related issues, but again I'm not stupid enough to exclusively blame the drivers, they use very different settings on work computers than I use on my own computers.

But I can honestly say I've never had an AMD driver based crash on any of my PC's, my laptop have had some random driver stopped working, which didn't cause a crash, but it's very rare, and again my Desktop has never had any issues at all. back when I had nVidia however I would have a rare bsod caused by nv4disp or whatever, maybe I should troll forums with how sucky nVidia drivers are all the time? Since that's now proof in forums like this for the quality of drivers.
btw. http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...uck-They-don-t

But yes back on topic, I do imagine that Valve won't decide based on current drivers, rather on what AMD and nVidia can deliver to them, but more likely is what someone wrote earlier, that there will be many configurations of Steambox, and they will come in all colors and configurations, it's a sort of Windows/Linux-ee(in the world of PC's) way of approaching consoles vs. what Sony and Microsoft is doing which is more like Apple. I hope Valve has success with this.

[gradinaruvasile]

You have to take in to account the fact that Steam Box will be Linux based.
All the AMD hate you see here is because of driver issues on Linux. Linux uses OpenGL as 3d hardware acceleration, whereas Windows uses Directx mainly. So the featureset available for Windows and Linux differ. As do the bugs.

Although i do use Linux and i have an AMD Trinity chip (A8-5500), i never encountered any errors with it, be it in games (including TF2 and CS 1.6 on Steam), playback or desktop.

Now everybody here says that will be a SteamBox for everyone, i wouldnt bet on this.
Offering multiple vendor configurations complicates things greatly because Valve has to ship a product that works OOTB with its factory software config. Now if you have AMD, Nvidia and maybe Intel, you have to test every single vendors hardware and drivers - this is both time and money consuming process.
I suppose they will select one vendor, the one that offers the best bang for the buck (from their point of view). Mind you, the hardware has to be in a small package (the SteamBox is very small), so adding dedicated cards here complicates things because it has to be cooled efficiently.
The best solution in this case seems to be an integrated video card with enough oomph to play games. My bet is on the Trinity or newer chips here.
At least on the desktop variants, the driver works really well, i havent encountered any issues playing Steam games.
Anyway, there are months before they unveil the box, so driver optimizations can be done (in fact lately there are quite a few AMD drivers that are aimed specifically at Steam).

[duby229]

You have to take in to account the fact that Steam Box will be Linux based.
All the AMD hate you see here is because of driver issues on Linux. Linux uses OpenGL as 3d hardware acceleration, whereas Windows uses Directx mainly. So the featureset available for Windows and Linux differ. As do the bugs.

Although i do use Linux and i have an AMD Trinity chip (A8-5500), i never encountered any errors with it, be it in games (including TF2 and CS 1.6 on Steam), playback or desktop.

Now everybody here says that will be a SteamBox for everyone, i wouldnt bet on this.
Offering multiple vendor configurations complicates things greatly because Valve has to ship a product that works OOTB with its factory software config. Now if you have AMD, Nvidia and maybe Intel, you have to test every single vendors hardware and drivers - this is both time and money consuming process.
I suppose they will select one vendor, the one that offers the best bang for the buck (from their point of view). Mind you, the hardware has to be in a small package (the SteamBox is very small), so adding dedicated cards here complicates things because it has to be cooled efficiently.
The best solution in this case seems to be an integrated video card with enough oomph to play games. My bet is on the Trinity or newer chips here.
At least on the desktop variants, the driver works really well, i havent encountered any issues playing Steam games.
Anyway, there are months before they unveil the box, so driver optimizations can be done (in fact lately there are quite a few AMD drivers that are aimed specifically at Steam).

Steam doesnt have to test whether or not the games they distribute work or not on your hardware. Either your hardware meets the minimum requirements for the games you've purchased or it doesnt. It is up the the game developer to determine what the expect the minimum requirements for there game should be.

Yes steam is going to have a reference design upon which hardware vendors can base there offering on. But There will be some boxes that are far higher end than others. I expect steam boxes to range from just 100$ on the very low end to as much as 2000$ for the very high end. Remember we arent talking about console games here. Steam is a distribution platform for PC games and the requirements for each game varies greatly. Even a very low end steam box is going to work well with a ton of games.

[Triv00ett]

I wouldn't discard an amd cpu, probably "octacore" piledriver.