Steam just announced new hardware

Prices not being out probably has to do with the prices going up on hardware due to AI. Companies are buying bulk hardware because of AI, means prices go up nonstop. Pricing on consoles going up also has to do with this, as long as the hardware is capable of working with AI, it will be at risk of going up in value.

If they announced the price now, in a couple of months, the pricing on the hardware could go up, which means a problem for them. So it makes the most sense to delay it for a bit and announce it a month later or so with price strategy in mind.

However, you can speculate the price based on the hints they have given. Steam frame is cheaper than index (most likely referring to the whole setup, not just the headset), considering it is going up against the quest 3, which is around 600€ currently, i expect the price to be around the same for the steam frame, so 500-700. 500 is wishful thinking that they are comparing to the index headset and not full set (lol). At the end of the day i can see it being priced similarly to the steam machine.

Steam machine won't be priced like a console, more like a pc. 500 is out of the question, the components behind the steam machine cost less than 450 bucks currently, this does not include controller, research and potential game license included if we are to assume HLX (Half life 3) is being announced next month. So the machine alone should cost 500-550, since it comes bundled with a controller and game probably, i can see them pushing it towards 600 minimum for the 512gb variant.

Controller is meh for prediction, pricing has to compare to other similar things in the market, so i expect it to compare to a sony ps5 controller in terms of pricing, so 70-80€. If they feel generous, they could aim specifically for the xbox controller, since it is usually cheaper and TBH xbox controller is lacking... I feel like it has been downgrading every generation, the quality on the first series during xbox 360 era, it felt much sturdier than what we get today.

So both pieces of hardware are most likely going to be priced similarly (600-700 range). There is also the possibility that Valve could price the frame lower and the machine higher, if the production cost on the frame is higher, they can try balancing the cost between both pieces of hardware, steam machine will 100% sell more than the steam frame. So if they want to make the steam frame more appealing, they can try do that. I feel like the steam machine will sell just fine if the price is less than 700 bucks for the 512gb variant.

As for the dates, probably has something to do with HLX. We got the announcement for the hardware in November, December we get the pre-order dates and pricing along with a game announcement to go with the hardware. The full release on hardware and software is probably going to be around March, at least they are aiming for a Q1 2026 release, January makes no sense business wise as people burn money during XMAS and it functions more like a recovery month, February is usually an empty/dead month, March is where things start catching up again.

EDIT: I completely forgot about the ram situation, ddr5 ram kits cost 200-300% more than they used to earlier this year. So we can expect that the final price on both the frame and machine, to have an increase of 100-200€. It all depends on how late Valve made the deal for the ram kits, right now they are closing in on 300% value, some months ago it would have been 200%. If ram price continues to go up, then the steam machine and frame have to be priced with the price hikes in mind, otherwise Valve is going to loose big money on this hardware. And they will have to keep prices updated to avoid other companies buying the hardware, just to rip off the necessary parts. If Valve sells at a loss, other companies will just jump in and take the hardware away from us.

Quoted from Steam Machine page "With over six times the horsepower of Steam Deck"

Steam Frame is an improvement in many ways, but a little mixed in others. It's basically Quest 3 with native SteamVR and without Meta stuff.

Compared to the Index the resolution is higher, FOV about the same, it uses LCD with the same refresh rate. Pancake lenses so there should be a lot less distortion at the periphery than in the Index. The controllers use better analogue sticks. It's a standalone gaming machine, no need for a dedicated PC to play from. There also seems to be a translation layer to play standard Windows games on it despite it running on Linux and ARM, but the details are vague.

A side-grade is inside-out tracking. No need for base stations like the Index but tracking precision will most likely be slightly worse. The controllers use regular AA batteries instead of a battery pack. There is no finger tracking by default - it looks like you need a separate "ergonomics pack" and it's unclear if it's included or a separate purchase. Speakers are apparently same quality but there's a lot more bleed, since they're on the headset strap as opposed to over the ear.

The pass-through cameras are black and white, the Quest are colour. Valve hinted that it will be possible to take the thing apart and use third party cameras, but I can't see that being doable for the vast majority of users.

There will be more latency since it's wireless, but also they use "foveated streaming" to reduce bandwidth which adds a few ms of processing.

Steam frame should be better than the index overall, but the index should still keep up in terms of quality.

The big thing about the steam frame, is it being a computer on its own with storage, so it means that you can play some games on that thing, without having to use a computer. Which is good. The chip used in there is a mobile chip, not the best one, but also not the worst one in the market. Currently it's like a mid to high range chip, it offers performance in the top 10% in the market, so technically it isn't bad hardware.

Performance-wise, it performs better than the steam deck for the most part but the difference isn't massive, so imagine having a mobile chip like that inside the headset, it will for sure run a bunch of games on its own. Essentially it's like having a stronger steam deck inside the VR. The issue here is the architecture behind the chip, mobile hardware is much different than what we have on pc and consoles, so performance can be great in some cases and bad in others when compared to a steam deck for example, despite being a stronger chip.

I think the strongest feature on the index, that could still beat the frame, is the controllers and tracking. The stations used to track your movements externally are probably a much better way of keeping track of what you are doing in terms of details, like moving your fingers. One of the things i liked about the index was exactly that, the first time i used it, was with HL Alyx, i literally tried to do a middle finger while doing a short livestream to facebook for family and friends, then i proceeded to start drawing on a white board at the start of the game and mess around with the physics, it was a fun experience, it felt ahead of its time back then.

Difficult to tell, as Steam again made a deal with AMD to customize their hardware. It won't be high-end but it'll be optimized for their expectations.

The CPU is equivalent to an underclocked Ryzen 5 7500/7600:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Ryzen_processors#Raphael_(7000_series,_Zen_4/RDNA2_based)

But the GPU is custom, the GPU embedded on those desktop processors is very weak, this one has 28 CU and it is RDNA3 (the one included on Zen 4 desktop Ryzens is RDNA2).

The GPU seems to be equivalent to a RX 7600M, a bit worse than a RX 7600 and a bit better than a RX 7400. In terms of tech, there's a RX 7900, a RX 7900 XT and a RX 7900 XTX and they've been out for about a year maybe more. So like with Nvidia GPU's, going down from a 5090 to 5080 to 5070, 5060 etc. AMD does the same thing. So a RX 7600 is benchmarking slightly worse than a RTX 4060.

However, keep in mind they said it uses FSR(AMD FIdelityFX Super Resolution) which is an upscaler. Meaning it will likely use a much worse res for games like a 640x480 or maybe a slightly higher one and increase that resolution all the way to 1920x1080 all the way to 4k which is 3840x2160. It does a surprisingly good job, but if you really look you'll see it.

The CPU seems to be close to equivalent if not slightly better than an AMD Ryzen 5 7600x. However in a compact form I'm not sure if that's true. If it is a 7600x it is not bad, but yeah it might not hold up well in CPU intensive games.

They even show someone working in a game engine and coding at the same time, so I think you'll be ok to do some small video editing, or run some other somewhat intensive apps on it, etc.

What I wish they added, is a slightly larger case option, which comes with a bit more room inside, so you can add nvme's, ssds or hdd's. 2tb of space in games looking at games like Ark Survival evolved which is around 300gb is like 5 games and just enough room for the OS. Some room for you as a user to add more ram would've been nice too, yes it comes with 16gb of ddr5 ram, and 8gb of VideoRam for the GPU, but how long will that be reliable. (PS: I just read under that you can upgrade the ram or ssds, not sure if this means you have to replace them entirely or you have empty room to add more, I'd prefer the latter, more room so you don't waste ram and ssds, because even if ddr6 ram comes out it will likely never be compatible with that motherboard, so it's not like you'll gain more than a few maybe 5-10 fps by getting the ultimate ram or ssd).

All in all I think this is going to be ok, but the price is what matters most. I built a pc with a RX7900XT, 7600x, 32gb ram, etc. about a year back for less than $1400. GPU difference to a rx7600 is about $600, and I had more ram, more storage, and well a full ATX case, and ahigh end psu(which bring up the price slightly). So I mean if this costs $500 it would be dumb to not get it if you're looking for an upgrade to a pc you can only play dos games on and want to move to the new generation. If this costs $1500 just build your own basically, or have a prebuilt place do it and you'll still get better performance. If this costs $800 it's probably ok(IMO a little high, but maybe assembly costs), but again it's already a year old prices. I'd like to see it around $600.

The games imo will run okay with all this, but it will be outdated as soon as it comes out, as is with every console. However, if what you're looking for is to play games like Cyberpunk 2077, CS2, Path of Exile, Need For Speed, Dota2, LOL, WOW, FFXIV they'll run perfectly fine on mid to high settings at 1080p no problem imo without even the use of FSR. If you are playing in the living room on the couch might as well use FSR because you wont see the details from that far away.

Hope this helps. I hope for us this means Valve will eventually release full pc's without the need of things like FSR to say it runs games at 4k.

These mini PCs can surprise you, they are usually cheaper than a normal pc with a dedicated GPU and they have good graphics performance if you don't crank everything to high. AMD has been killing it with their integrated GPUs.

I have zen 3 5700g cpu with vega graphics. It's a 5 year old chip, lot of people would say it was already a weak GPU, but over the years it just kept getting better performance on Linux. For example Witcher 3 runs better now, then it did when I got the mini pc. I can play cyberpunk(30+ fps) rdr2, elden ring etc. Since SteamOS is Linux, you can expect performance gains in the coming years.

Also this thing probably will be compatible with an external GPU, so if down the line you want to invest in a better GPU, you can.

It'll be solid for 1080p 60fps gaming with high/ultra settings as long as raytracing is kept off (or at a low/medium setting in some cases). You could turn down some settings and upscale via FSR to get a pseudo 4k60, but I wouldn't recommend it unless your TV is particularly bad at handling 1080p input.

The 8gb of vram is definitely going to be the main bottleneck, should have gone with 12gb.

Other have already basically covered the hardware specs, which I believe based on what's noted would mean an R5 7600 CPU and a GPU similar to the RX 7600M.

With that in mind, I'd assume performance would likely be about 15-25% worse than seen in this video, but still take that with a grain of salt at this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5E6QEZodN8

Regardless, it will be a competent 1080p PC, let's just hope the price reflects the performance. When the time comes I have more info, I'll certainly analyze if it's worth the cost.

Steam machine is a midrange pc currently, soon to be lowrange (in less than 2 years probably, all it takes if for a next gen console to come to the market, xbox is aiming for a 2026 release and sony for 2027, this means that games will push the minimum hardware up to start matching the new generation consoles, btw consoles does not mean the good old console system, from this point onwards, consoles are not consoles, as they will transition to pc gaming like we have seen with xbox, sony will be next and even nintendo will do this years down the road, if each brand wants to grow, they have to adopt pc gaming and mobile gaming). It compares to base ps5 and xbox series x, it will not beat both, but it can trade blows. The GPU is meant to be 80-90% of what the ps5 is capable of, the CPU is more efficient and has better single core performance (20-30%) while multicore performance it is slower than the consoles (about 15-20% slower). Most games prefer single core performance, but there is an increase in games that focus in multicore performance, if future games continue with the same trend, then the CPU on the steam machine is literally f'ed when it comes to those new games.

Key factors to consider here:
1) 8gb vram is not enough, yes most games work with 8gb and you can work around on more demanding games by using upscalers with lower resolution being upscaled, but this is literally cheating to get minimum performance.

2) 16gb ram is okay currently, but next generation "consoles" are going to push towards 24gb, perhaps even 32gb ram in the upcoming years, so 16gb works right now, but it will be a problem in 3-4 years. There are games pushing as high as 22GB ram usage when using high quality settings and resolution. The good thing here is that the steam machine is not a beast, so pushing the quality up is not going to be a possibility all the time, which means, ram will be used less as a consequence. However, multitasking also has an impact with this stuff. If you decide to install windows on this thing, you are screwing yourself up too, as windows 11 uses lots of ram in the background. This will impact performance if the game has less access to your ram, because it is limited by the system. Having stuff in the background is also not recommended to save up on ram usage.

3) CPU is a mobile variant from the looks of it, simply based on the TDP statement, it means the CPU will be more on the efficient side of things and not focused in top performance like you see in desktop PCs. So it's like having a midrange laptop CPU in a desktop pc. However, they can and might increase performance on this thing, if they figure out a way of blocking the igpu (integrated graphics card) on the user side of things. TDP is shared between CPU cores and igpu cores, so blocking/disabling the igpu cores could help the CPU perform a little better than usual. I'm saying blocking this on the user side of things because this should be optional for the user. If the GPU kicks the bucket 5 years into the future, having the igpu blocked via factory standard, means you would have steam machine acting like paper weight. So creating a profile mode for the steam machine through the BIOS, that stops the IGPU from working but can be reverted with a simple reset, seems like a good way to do things. Because this would allow the steam machine to work even if the GPU died, it could run some games and function as a pc for browsing and whatnot. This is also to avoid potential e-waste by making the most use out of your hardware.

4) You can probably stretch this hardware to play majority of games in a playable state for 5 years at best. I don't see it surviving the most demanding games at that point in time, it will either suffer lack of VRAM, CPU will not be performing enough to run the games, lack of ram, or a combination of all of these things.

5) Do not expect to get the top tier performance in games, this is a midrange currently, soon to be lowrange machine. Lowrange does not mean it is the worst for gaming, there is still very lowrange machines and entry level hardware for gaming. A very low range system is a system used for indie titles or popular free to play games. An entry level system is a system that plays a good selection of indie titles and some of the free to play games too along with older AAA games from like 2 console generations ago.

PC specs/performance is usually controlled based on latest console hardware in the market as games have to be optimized for consoles, so their quality standard is created with that specific hardware in mind, not pc hardware. When a new generation system hits the market, there is a small timeframe for the previous generation to stop being supported with new demanding titles. Usually 1-2 years for that to happen. After that the old generation receives minimal game releases and updates to then eventually cease to receive support. The system that will "force" hardware specs to go up and more or less match a specific criteria, is going to be the ps6. Based on rumours and leaks, xbox is aiming for a "very premium" system for 2026, it will be an expensive release. While Sony is planning on making PS6 more affordable with a 2027 release window, so slightly cheaper than ps5, trying to match the ps4. PS6 will probably not be that big of a jump in performance, it is very possible that the ps5 pro can be better in terms of GPU than the ps6, but it will be limited by the CPU side of things, just like how xbox one x had a beefier GPU than the xbox series s, but the series s performed better in most cases because the CPU was on a different league on its own. To me this makes sense in terms of generation leap for consoles and it would also help pc gaming a lot, as it wouldn't create massive jumps in specs all the time like in the past, if Sony did the same as xbox, pc gaming would be in trouble. This is important considering the current market we have, things are getting too expensive for the average person.

The system RAM and the SSD are upgradeable, check the second video posted here

Yeah, controller is interesting, cube itself is a media PC basically with SteamOS for gaming, if you (anyone) already have a decent+++ PC, you don't need to even look at it.

Playstation and Nintendo haven't at the very least started using Hall Effect sticks in their controllers

Sega Saturn (1994) and the Dreamcast later had controllers with Hall Effect sticks. The technology was there, but other manufacturers obviously wanted you to replace your controllers more frequently.

i still love my steam controller, these r fighting words ;)

TMR sticks are better than Hall Effect ones for wireless controllers, they use a lot less power.

The steam frame looks very impressive, but as someone who owns a PSVR2, I regret not getting a Meta Quest 3 instead. Only Meta is funding quality first party titles nowadays, if you go for any other headset then the library can get limited. You can mod games on PC of course, but you'd lose access to some of the highest quality titles

You can make your own steam machine, especially with and AMD gpu, there are many distros that will give you the SteamOS experience and I hope Valve at some point will release a general SteamOS for every hardware. I think they didn't do it, because they're waiting for Nvidia to get it's act together with their Linux driver, which might happen next year.

Apparently they weren't targeting consoles, they're targeting mini pc's. Because there's many mini pc's that sell for $300 which basically are half the size of the steam cube but aren't for gaming as they only have an iGPU and provide much less performance. The price is what matters here in the end.

Or maybe they were targeting those enthusiasts who were building "mini pc's" by spending like $1000 on a super custom expensive case that's worth $15 and cramming another $3000 worth of hardware in there with it still looking bigger than the cube with terrible thermals.

Not entirely sure what they mean by "mini pc users". Maybe both.

The controllers shouldn't use too much battery. Honestly I would like to see more devices with changeable batteries. Only if there was a new standard for batteries not just these A types.

There isn't enough information about the GPU, but I doubt it will be struggling.

Also there's something wrong with your PC or it's too old, because I play POE1 on a mini pc with only a ryzen 5700g APU good performance, the fan isn't even going full speed.

I can't watch that dude, he looks so uncomfortable all the time.

It will able to do 4k on all the modern games that were good the last few years. Maybe not with everything cranked to highest quality, but it will be able to deliver 4k.