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Steam Machine Prototypes Use Intel CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs
An anonymous reader writes "Valve has revealed their first Steam Machines prototype details. The first 300 Steam Machine prototypes to ship will use various high-end Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs while running their custom SteamOS Linux distribution. The Intel Haswell CPU + NVIDIA GPU combination should work well on Linux with the binary drivers. Using a range of CPUs/GPUs in the prototypes will allow them to better gauge the performance and effectiveness. Valve also said they will be releasing the CAD design files to their custom living room console enclosure for those who'd like to reproduce them."
Valve is careful to point out that these specs aren't intended as a standard: "[T]o be clear, this design is not meant to serve the needs of all of the tens of millions of Steam users. It may, however, be the kind of machine that a significant percentage of Steam users would actually want to purchase — those who want plenty of performance in a high-end living room package. Many others would opt for machines that have been more carefully designed to cost less, or to be tiny, or super quiet, and there will be Steam Machines that fit those descriptions."
By using Intel or AMD, they'd be giving the finger to the GPU vendor with the clearly superior hardware. Some of use actually just want the best computing package and don't care so much about the open source religion.
Intel i3 is now a high-end CPU?
It runs some games faster than an 8-core AMD...
What GPU would be better for Valve's Linux based OS? Intel is irrelevant, AMD/ATI Linux drivers are far beyond terrible, and all the open source drivers have terrible performance.
Nvidia hardware isn't really clearly superior to AMD.. they rotate on who has the best hardware at various price points.
But sure, the point is that this hardware should do a specific job for gamers at a specific price point, if Nvidia GPU's are the best bet for that in this product price segment there's no reason to be an ideological crusader about it. The point is to be able to play games, not make the average couch potato start writing driver code on his TV.
Personally, I can't wait until the GPU goes the way of the math coprocessor.
Probably shouldn't hold your breath on that...
Nice fallacy, namely your assertion that commercial vendors actually do any work, especially after-the-fact... you know, like all the updates MS has made to the registry editor over the years, or the extensive CLI functionality, and let us not forget their impressively powerful and flexible search/scheduling options they built into Outlook. /sarcasm
You keep using that word ("you")... but I do not think it means what you think it means. I believe the word you're looking for is "I", because if your assertion were true, Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, FreeBSD and many others wouldn't exist - or wouldn't exist as they do today - with a huge amount of software being continuously developed by people who are happy to keep doing it so they have the tools they want/need to do what they want to do.
Maybe *you* kept getting ripped off because you were doing it wrong. Meanwhile, I'm going to go have drinks with my buddies from Redhat who get paid perfectly well.
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
Other than promoting Linux, why do I want
I'm gonna stop you right there -- you're assuming this is for you. Well, it's not. It's for people who do have a use for this stuff, like e.g. people who want a good PC to play PC-games on and want it to be useable from the couch with a controller, but who don't want to have to go through the hassle of building one themselves.
Intel is starting to plateau in the CPU business (they have no real competition), so I wouldn't be surprised if they looked at the current market and decided to put serious effort into the GPU biz.
They already have a loyal enthusiast following.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!