+1. Was planning to get an Index this Christmas so great timing.
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Happy cake day.
I saw this announcement earlier. I'm mildly excited.
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Not much different than my aging computer and I won't fool myself into thinking it can handle 4k.
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Looks like they're ready to tap their Steamdeck target audience with more expensive hardware. Good for them I guess. You should always profit off of people who don't know what to do with their money
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Thanks for posting this. Very interested in the Steam Frame. I've wanted to go cable free after using the Vive, Index, and Quest. Yet I didn't want to buy Meta's hardware.
Not at all interested in the Steam Machine, though. Seems like a very niche market that will need to carry a small computer around with them to hook up to a TV. Edit: Actually, I could see Steam Machine being attractive to people who don't want to buy/build a gaming PC.
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Steam Machine 8GB Vram can be issue...
Still if they only give it 12Gb Vram, 8GB 128Bit + clamshell 4Gb 64Bit will be enough.
128Bit GDDR6 288GB/s 64Bit 144Gb/s
Unusual yes but in past GTX 970 have two pulls 3.5+0.5GB
Few $ price difference and will give this device much smoother experience.
On other side if the go for 16GB will probably sit unutilised.
Also connection between CPU and GPU is only PCIe 4.0 x8 bandwidth of 16 GB/s due this any spill out from Vram to system Ram will case performance issue.
Even if they give 10GB Vram 8GB 128Bit + clamshell 2Gb 32Bit will be nice
128Bit GDDR6 288GB/s 32Bit 72Gb/s
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I'm guessing it will work great with the Valve index controllers. I actually prefer the straps on those: https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/index/controllers
EDIT: I take that back. The new controllers have straps as well: https://youtu.be/dU3ru09HTng?si=WjWJ_8W8SiZXpZJf&t=338
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looks underwelming.
i just want them to fix the endless amount of steamdeck bugs....
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Controller is a must-buy for me, regardless of the price. The only one that have absolutely every feature I want. It is the perfect controller, with TMR capacitive sticks, trackpads, gyro, grip buttons and good battery life. I hope it will be ergonomical like the Deck.
Steam Frame - all depends on the price. Since I skipped Quest 3 I can at least think about buying it. There were a lot good Humble VR bundles, so I would have a lot to try out. They are also working on Fex translation layer that will enable playing x86 games on the device which is amazing.
GabeCube - it looks awesome, but I'm mostly worried about 8GB of VRAM, they should have gone with 12 for sure. I have no need for it as I already have 6800XT in my PC so it would be a downgrade, but I'm hoping for it to do well.
All in all it was excellent showing and big Valve win, good first impressions across the board.
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I think it will work well for the casual gamer who does not want to fiddle with Windows or Mac settings just to play a game, but also doesn't want to be limited to a useless console as you can install apps on it.
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I'm just popping in to say that I will most probably be very tempted to purchase their controller. I was very much bummed when the original gamepad was discontinued and Volvo had it on sale on Steam, because it could not be shipped to Canada. As far as the price goes, I'm hoping that it won't be too expensive... It'd be great if it would be the same price as a regular, black wireless Xbox controller (80$ CAD), but I suspect that it's gonna be 100$ CAD at the very least.
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I am expecting bigger price, 80-100 USD. Of course I would love for it to be as cheap as possible, for 60-70 I would get two right away. We'll see, hopes are one thing, reality is another. :)
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I agree with you, but after checking I saw that the original Steam Controller was only $50. So I think/hope it may be on the lower end of your guess. :)
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The specs of the 'cube' are underwhelming. Might be fine as an alternative for consoles, but to power your home network? 16 GB of RAM in 2025 isn't enough (https://www.howtogeek.com/16gb-of-ram-is-no-longer-enough-for-gamers/). I guess if the price is below 1,000 $ it is still a nice machine though.
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No way it will be that pricey, I'm kinda expecting 700-800, maybe little subsidized by Valve and it needs to be somewhat appealing for potential buyers. Who are they? Well, I would say people who have one console and want to get into PC gaming and don't want to spend that much on a PC or don't want/know to build one themselves. They are not that demanding so don't need latest and greatest in raw power. SteamOS is great proposition for them also, it gets really close to plug&play advantage of consoles, as much as it is possible for a PC anyway.
Also there are people who already have nice setup but maybe want something for their living room to connect to big TV and play from the couch.
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I completely agree with the target market for the thing and I also hope for it to be in the 800 $ range. The price really makes or breaks it.
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Seeing an article from last year telling you RAM is cheap feels cursed.
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You are overthinking it...and 16GB of RAM is plenty for the average PC user. I have 64GB and with my habitual 175+ browser tabs open I'm only using half. When tabs go inactive it drops to 10GB.
Lots of ram was important when drives were slow. With SSDs and Nvme drives and a decent CPU most won't even notice the swap file working. That along with a decent GPU dedicated to graphics makes it even less noticeable.
PC fanatics only notice because they have nothing better to do than crank everything on high and compare framerates.
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So your take is, stressing out the SSD's is totally okay as they are fast enough???
Pagefile Swapping will increase over time, which will cause IG stutter and slow down the system not only in gaming, even on a m.2.
SSD and M.2 longevity depends on the write and read cycles they are undergoing, constantly stressing them will reduce this noticeably.
Disk Thrashing is still a thing even in 2025 and why would anyone use the more expensive parts to do a worse job than the cheaper one.
Ram has been stupidly cheap. Maybe I count as PC Fanatic in your eyes, but I want to use my stuff as long as possible, therefor balancing the system and resources has always been a priority.
You can make this even more terrifying. Windows system with 16gb Ram and a RX 6400 4GB or RX 6500 XT 4GB. Depending on the game you will be stressing the RAM twice as the System memory will rely on the page file and the GPU is trying to to compensate the lack of vram, relying on the RAM... which already is outsourcing to the SSD. Going for a pretty full single drive system will make this even worse, as you loose speed due the lack of capacity and this will cause high loads pretty fast, which can even make a slide show ending in a crashing system.
Not enough Ram has never been a good idea and never will be.
Just slapping in a stronger GPU will reduce the stress, but won't solve the issue. Just get some more Ram - give the system a little bit of room to breath.
The point here is not that this can't work, as it really depends on what you are playing and doing with the system, but if you should pass the Ram limitations of the system, you will not only notice at some point, but definitely kill your hardware slowly and most likely unnoticed until it is to late. You could at least hear the drives screaming under stress in the past.
This is not about FPS and framerate comparison, this is about stating that limited ram will cause no noticeable issues... but it does. Most ppl. don't even know about this and start buying new system / parts even though some minor fixes could have solved the issues. Not everyone is able to afford a new system every few years and for those this will matter, a lot.
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You are still overthinking it. I am yet to see SSDs get reduced longevity just from a swap file, not to mention M.2 drives. The stress comes from most gamers and developers not understanding how to use their resources properly, resulting in frequent degradation from misuse...like playing high end games with 4GB of vram.
The Steam machine is not targeted at those who already have a high end PC, and is not a replacement for your existing PC if you plan to play poorly optimized AAA games at uncapped frame-rates. Its about making gaming available to mainstream PC users without the headache of hardware configuration and limitations of a console.
Valve understand this and its one of the reasons their OS is custom to reduce bloatware for the everyday gamer. They are not bothered by those who think more is more. Steam hardware data shows around 70% of users have 16GB. Still if you want more ram on your Steam machine, Valve has confirmed that upgrades will be available.
And How-to-geek is not a reliable source for gaming info. I recommend those who actually run tests: https://youtu.be/mklCPWNyJC0?si=GBKV_c37tPT2je3W. They even answer some of your questions.
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My issue here is simply you making it sound like running less RAM than needed is ok, as long as you don't notice, which it is not. You not having seen a drive fail yet, does not alter the fact, that it will be harmful to the system.
While this might not be an issue for Valves attempt here and running a Linux based OS, things might look different using windows, which they stated you are able to use on the Steam Machine as well.
This is not overthinking, this is simply expecting the worst from the users, based on experience and troubleshooting way to many horrible PC's. Having a non cooled Pci-e 5.0 m.2 below a GPU, bad ventilation and a Ram issue on top... and this was not even the worst scenario.
Given the hardware known so far, this system would also make a decent work PC with very low consumption in all workloads and for those who don't want to go the more expensive AI route, this also could be an alternative. Really looking forward to the release and tests coming up.
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After watching some other videos talking about the new hardware I noticed something a lot more interesting that the things themselves, they're working on an emulation layer to run x86 games on an ARM CPU. If this FEX translation layer they're rolling with the Frame is as well implemented and performing as Proton then this could be huge in the future, we've already seen just how well Box86/64 can run games and that's done by independent devs, but FEX has the advantage of being maintained by a Valve and it'll have native integration with Proton!
If FEX is eventually rolled in an official ARM release of Steam for general Linux distros we could one day see "cheap" ARM-based handhelds running full Steam natively with none of the jankyness from having to install it through hacky ways, we might even see Steam for Android before the end of this decade (assuming Google doesn't "accidentally" nuke the OS's usability before that).
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Valve is the model that every studio and gaming company should be following. Smart and simple hiring practices (not just checking useless boxes) and no bloat (~350 employees). Yet they're producing smarter and better products (for the targeted demographics) than the likes of Microsoft, Sony, EA, Blizzard, etc.; that all have thousands of employees.
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Some of these big name corpos fires more people in their annual layoffs then Valve has on payroll. That should be indication on how redicilously bloated all these corporations are. When Musk took over twitter he already showed the world what a huge joke these corpos and their internal culture is. Daily breakfest for office to which no one goes to anyway simply burning money, but no one cares - the company is too big to understand, the decision makers couldnt care less because they are being overpaid for doing literally nothing and the service provider just raking in money from braindead IT companies running aftair "startup feel".
This is also why IMO the AAA market is so fucked now. You have these big names corpos who have gazzilions of useless people on payroll, needing to cover redicilous running expenses, including CEO, CTO, CFO, COO, CGO, CPO. CJO and whatnot salaries while not being able to actually hire skilled devs, but pumping out 100 eur games to reach corporate revenue targets. akhem black ops 7
Its refreshing to see companies like Valve still being there. I hope more indie devs and more startups dont go running aftar corporate bullshit and will create what people want and need.
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Valve has confirmed the Steam Machine's 16 GB will be up-gradable.
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From various videos, system memory is SO-DIMM. Not easily accessible; you have to take the system apart to some degree.
Comparatively, the SSD is simple to get to. The standard M.2 2230 can be swapped for a more common M.2 2280.
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Steam Controller
Steam Frame
Steam Machine aka GabeCube
Steam Hardware Announcement
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