You don't need that much power. The Rasperry Pi just forwards the Controller Inputs to the PC and from the PC it receives the rendered picture and outputs it on your TV. The processing of the game still takes place on your PC.
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ZOTAC announce their first Steam Machine (Intel Skylake CPU, GTX 970m)
- Thread starter ekim
- Start date
You don't need that much power. The Rasperry Pi just forwards the Controller Inputs to the PC and from the PC it receives the rendered picture and outputs it on your TV. The processing of the game still takes place on your PC.
He's talking about Steam Link and in-home streaming, not Steam Box.
Cizeta-Moroder
Banned
No Displayport means no G-sync right? Dead on arrival, unless Freesync works via HDMI 2.
Its just a video decoder, the host PC does the rendering, so very little horsepower is needed at all.
Limelight Pi uses nVidia technology which is used to do the streaming to the SHIELD. It requires a GTX 7 series or above GPU in the host.
Actually the 970m is just 5-10% shy of the 970 in performance. It's a downclocked 970, not a 960 rebranded and installed in BGA packaging.
That's why a lot of people were excited about the upcoming 900 series coming to Steam Machines. You were getting essentially desktop parts of the same class instead of something far weaker as previously seen with mobile part versions.
Maxwell architecture is a very big deal in terms of performance per watt.
texhnolyze
Banned
Yes, I'm quite aware of that.
It's just that those streaming devices have different specs, what are those specs for?
I've checked the Comfy PC gaming thread, and it seems that there are some good and not too god streaming devices.
Frankfurter
Member
Just clarify what devices you are referring to here?
Angelus Errare
Banned
Looks like an ugly Mac Mini
Frankfurter
Member
It really isn't. Where do you have that information from? It has less TMUs, less memory, a smaller memory interface, lower clock speeds across the board. The 970 has almost 50% higher processing power than the 970M and 60%+ more memory bandwith (~80% if you count the 0.5GB thing).
texhnolyze
Banned
TheLegendOfMart
Banned
The difference in SMM outweigh the 200MHz difference in clockspeed.
alexandros
Banned
Damn, the 970m is really powerful.
Frankfurter
Member
Says who? Their processing power is pretty much identical.
Only proper review I could find so far (in German, but I guess you get the idea):
http://www.computerbase.de/2014-10/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970m-sli-notebook-test/3/
970M is ~3% faster than 760 there, i.e. slower than 960.
I'm misremembering it. I only read the review about how the performance gap closed significantly on Anandtech.
It's actually with 20-25% below the 970.
It's still a big deal since mobile versions would be 50-60% behind the desktop version in the past.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8585/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980m-970m-mobile-maxwell-gm204/2
Yes, its not the best solution if all you care about in the world is comfy couch online competitive FPS's. If you can work around that, and maybe accept a slight disadvantage, use a keyboard/mouse like normal, or just not play them, its really not a huge deal. That one thing does not completely devalue all the other advantages it has.
Frankfurter
Member
970 is more like a 50% performance boost.
http://www.computerbase.de/2014-10/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970m-sli-notebook-test/3/
That anandtech link you provided would actually mean that 970 is more like ~1.6-1.8 the performance of the 970M, i.e. an even bigger difference than what computerbase measured.
"In terms of theoretical compute performance (cores * clock speed), the GTX 980M will be about 30-35% faster than the GTX 970M in GPU-bound situations. If you're curious, the GTX 970M will also offer around 55-65% of the performance of the desktop GTX 970, so the second tier GPU ends up being closer to what we've seen with previous generations of NVIDIA mobile GPUs."
Emulators could be one reason. Recently these devices were being considered to game on directly, rather than streaming to them.
I use my Pi for streaming, the only downside is that the 360 wireless receiver requires more power than the Pi USB ports can supply. But my 360 pads can connect to my Host PC from where i stream from anyways.
I think this problem is solved on the newer Raspberry Pi. I use Ethernet all the way too.
Woo-Fu
Banned
Well, you'll have to use one of them for audio out to your HT if you want more than stereo.
Which they really should consider. $1000 for a "streaming" box just... isn't really what prime-time should be. It's kinda sad that Valve or hardware manufacturers aren't attempting to eat a few losses to get a mid-range/PS4-clone out for around the PS4's price to attempt to trojan horse PC's on primarily console gamers.
But I guess the question is: how would you put that prospect on primary console gamers. So probably a good thing to go this way, even if it's wayyy more overpriced (IMO) than it should be.
ashecitism
Member
Huh? They're talking about cheap streaming solutions, like the Steam Link.
The Streaming box "Steam Link" is $49.99 - that's less than a AAA game
I H8 Memes
Member
Why would I want a white console? To go with my white blue ray player and my tv with a white bazel?
Now that I think about it i've never owned a white console. Not even the PS1.
Now that I think about it i've never owned a white console. Not even the PS1.
There are no royalties for the hardware manufacturer. They have to make the money on the hardware. Thus they have no interest in "subsidising" steam machines.
Abinash117
Member
Do you have to buy the controller separately and I don't know much about steam OS, but how much ram does the OS take up?
PandaShake
Member
So is this anything different than what we've seen in the past couple of years? Expensive pre-built pcs in a small form factor (definition of steam box I guess). People get excited about specs and then the price is announced indicating above market value for parts within. Save hundreds and build yourself a pc with better parts in an mini/micro case. People will need to pay a high premium for a small box.
A Steam Controller come with the Machine, Valve supplies them to OEMs for free. Generally Linux distros have reduced resource requirements than Windows but no one knows what the release version of SteamOS will be like
AusRoachman
Member
So could these just be used as a normal PC? Is steam the os or can I just toggle to windows e.t.c?
What's the market value for Skylake?
Yes, you can just install windows and use it as a normal PC.
You would have to buy the windows licence separately though.
Think you missed the context of my post. Was referring to less than $200 devices, raspberry pi etc.
Valve are making a $50 box to stream to.
GifGafIsTheBestGaf
Member
if it has a nice price ill try to get one for work
Abinash117
Member
I just checked some of the ram usage on some are lower than 100Mbs and others have around 2gbs . If it takes a good chunk of ram than some games won't be able to run on some steammachines?
elcuervo75
Banned
I am starting to like Zotac more and more, but that case needs to look way better than that.
The idea of Steam Machines are that the user can adjust the contents to their hearts content.
What happened about this design?
I'm not a fan of using notebook like hardware instead of using full pc components in a small, console like case.
This case unites the pros of consoles (convenient form factor) with the pros of pc's (easily upgradable, good price ratio for hardware, you can use mostly standard pc components).
I really wish they would go this way with steam machines...
I'm not a fan of using notebook like hardware instead of using full pc components in a small, console like case.
This case unites the pros of consoles (convenient form factor) with the pros of pc's (easily upgradable, good price ratio for hardware, you can use mostly standard pc components).
I really wish they would go this way with steam machines...
here's some benchmarks from tomshardware if you want to know a bit about how the card performs
If you want, you can also build your own pc and install steam os on it.
970M vs 960
Pixel Rate: 44.4 GPixel/s vs 36.1 GPixel/s
Texture Rate: 73.9 GTexel/s vs 72.1 GTexel/s
Floating-point performance: 2,365 GFLOPS vs 2,308 GFLOPS
970M has a pretty big edge on pixel fillrate, but otherwise it seems pretty even.
I don't know if it will be a mainstream success or not, but I know it doesn't appeal to me.
PCs are all about customization so steam machines take away the most important part of that. True there are lots of different builds but even just looking at this Zotac model, there are a few things I'd change, bigger SSD, gtx 970 oc not 970m etc. I like the case a lot though.
But if you're going to buy something like this you end up researching on them, and you'll want to choose your own parts in the end to maximize performance vs budget. The only thing I can see this being a success is selling these at Department stores but even then people have done so for a long time now.
matrixman92
Member
ughhhhh zotac...never again
my video card of theirs died, and they tried to replace it with one that was inferior in every way. Took them about a week to get back when I declined their replacement. About a month overall to replace my dead video card
my video card of theirs died, and they tried to replace it with one that was inferior in every way. Took them about a week to get back when I declined their replacement. About a month overall to replace my dead video card
Memorabilia
Member
Memorabilia
Member
Ahhh...ok...comes in a couple hundred above what I would consider impulse buy territory. Hopefully as the article notes Zotac will be able to launch at a lower price.