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."

Comments

None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Anonymous Coward]

So this is a big middle finger to the open source driver developers, I guess. If they wanted real world testing and feedback of their work, they should look elsewhere.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a big thumbs up to GAMERS, who this hardware is designed for. NVIDIA is simply the best GPU for gaming, and Intel is laughable in the serious gaming GPU space. Kudos to Valve for making this choice.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[watcher-rv4]

" NVIDIA is simply the best GPU for gaming". Where have you been?

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[ichthus]

Their objective is to maximize and/or evaluate possibly maximal performance -- not make people feel good about the work they're doing for the open source/Linux community. Calm down.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[arbiter1]

last time i used AMD/ATI hardware in linux it was one the biggest headaches had I had in years. only 800x600 rez max and driver just screwed the machine to an unfix able state.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[binarylarry]

If you've checked the latest benchmarks, Intel is becoming more and more relevant each iteration.

Intel GPU's are fairly decent midlevel performers these days AND the *official* Intel drivers are open source.

Personally, I can't wait until the GPU goes the way of the math coprocessor. Fuck dealing with Nvidia and AMD's awful driver support.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Anonymous Coward]

nVidia is the dad that works long hours, comes home tired, and doesn't play with his kid. AMD is the drunkard abusing his children. :(

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[SuricouRaven]

Intel graphics are pathetic by gaming standards - they are more for office work. Being on the same package as the CPU puts serious constraints on heat dissipation, they they can't come close to the performance of a discrete GPU. The choice is between nvidia and ATI/AMD.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[SuricouRaven]

I wouldn't consider drivers a serious issue. If Valve goes to AMD/ATI and says 'We'll buy a hundred thousand chips for the first production run, with potential sales of fifteen million to follow' I'm sure improved driver support would quickly follow.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Joviex]

This is why open source is a stupid idea. With closed source software, people have to PAY you for your WORK. With open source, everyone rips you off and you're left complaining about how they didn't contribute, with no recourse because you were dumb enough to work for free.

Man if I had points, you'd get em. Complaining about doing work (free), that everyone uses, is anathema to open source. Either get on the boat or off - straddling the middle just makes for a good youtube video.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Shinobi]

It hasn't worked with the millions of chips purchased by OEM's such as Sapphire etc, why do you think Valve would succeed? Blind hope?

Hell, it took ages for them to fix some of the completely retarded requirements for accessing OpenCL interface on Linux, and that was with a lot of people in the HPC field(both users/potential customers and vendors/potential resellers) begging them on their bare knees. It's been almost a year since I last looked at AMD's GPU's for a client, but they might STILL have the completely idiotic requirement of having X running if you want to access the OpenCL interface(Something nVidia doesn't require....)

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[cusco]

99 percent of us are utterly incapable of creating drivers or working on kernel and GUI enhancements, so you're right, we "far outstrip" the people who can do the work. Sorry, we're just going to benefit from other people's labor.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[jedidiah]

Sure. Want me to give you the finger in person?

Improve your result. Don't expect special consideration if your results aren't satisfactory.

Otherwise I will take a page out of the book of Linus.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Sir_Sri]

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.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[prelelat]

It might have been a very large push in getting Nvidia to be more supportive of an open driver.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/nvidia-seeks-peace-with-linux-pledges-help-on-open-source-driver/

They have also been putting out a better closed driver for linux for years in my opinion. I have never had anything but issues with the radeon amd drivers. Sometimes you want things to work more than you want them to be open. This could be very good for the opensource community.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[jandrese]

Valve's own statistics show that gamers tend to prefer nVidia hardware. Because this is going to run Linux there really isn't a good alternative anyway. Intel Graphics are still a joke and AMD's drivers are still terrible. As much as free software guys hate it, the nVidia binary blob driver is the best supported 3D graphics driver on Linux.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Kielistic]

Personally, I can't wait until the GPU goes the way of the math coprocessor.

Probably shouldn't hold your breath on that...

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[s13g3]

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.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything Valve is doing is based on open source software. And yet you have the nerve to complain that open source is "stupid"?! It could never work, eh? Do you have even an inkling, even a smidgeon of intelligence, enough insight to notice that the very product your are bleating about would even be possible if it weren't using open source / free software? Even the site you are posting on uses it. The only complaining I hear is your own. The people who actually, you know, DO REAL SHIT THAT YOU USE AND BENEFIT FROM are not complaining. Just you. Idiot.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[ichthus]

That shit matters in the long term for interoperability...

Why?

That security part in particular should have your attention if you've been paying attention to the Snowden releases.

Yep, good point. That's why I use Nouveau at home. But again, remember, this is a gaming device -- and a beta release one at that. They're after benchmarks, and their primary objective is to legitimize the Steam Box as a viable gaming device to the gamers -- people who have a particular interest in performance, not long term open source altruism.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[houstonbofh]

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.

Not on Linux. nVidia consistently outperforms AMD, and is significantly more stable. And they have been actively working with Valve for quite some time to fix some show-stopping driver bugs.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[houstonbofh]

I wouldn't consider drivers a serious issue. If Valve goes to AMD/ATI and says 'We'll buy a hundred thousand chips for the first production run, with potential sales of fifteen million to follow' I'm sure improved driver support would quickly follow.

Actually, nVidia has been actively working with them for over a year now fixing some significant driver bugs. And they haven't bought anything yet.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[houstonbofh]

We are calm, this is just a giant fuck-you to the people who want open drivers for good reasons. I get that there are all sorts of stupid (and Microsoft-driven apparently) contractual reasons why NVidia won't find it easy to open-source their drivers. This doesn't mean I can't be fucking disappointed about Valve choosing short-term thinking over long-term.

Actually they chose performance over purity. And I agree, since I made the same choice. nVidia drivers are more stable than AMD, and the card perform better on Linux.

Besides, their business is selling closed source software. Not a big surprise that it does not offend them the way it does you...

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[DragonTHC]

no, it's a big high five to the clearly superior hardware vendors.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[rsilvergun]

Intel can't perform well enough to keep up with current gen and ATI has a long history of driver issues (sorry, but it's true).

For better or for worse Valve is stuck with nVidia.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[binarylarry]

Here's a current gen Intel GPU playing Crysis 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sCssboE4HHU#t=232

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Tough Love]

800x600, what kind of troll is that?

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Nemyst]

AMD have issues delivering a good drive on Windows (I have two of their cards, I'm very much aware of the situation), so forget doing the same on Linux. I don't know what their driver engineers are doing, but it isn't working; their software is slow, occasionally crashes and their game support usually lags significantly behind Nvidia's, especially if you go multi-GPU. I'm not even going to talk about customization and extra software, where Nvidia is king by a mile.

The greatest advantage AMD has had is solid performance at a cheaper price, just like their CPUs. A few generations ago, they could even outperform Nvidia pretty consistently, but they've lost that position since then while not fixing the bugs that plagued them back then. Now that benchmarks and reviewers are evolving, with more focus put on frame timing instead of just FPS, AMD's issues are coming to light.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[symbolset]

It looks like nVidia is getting more serious about Linux and Steam of late. Intel too. Probably more to do with AMD winning both XB One and PS4 that love of open standards, but hey - whatever works. These are some hefty specs for a Linux TV/game console. I hope people will be willing to pay up. The Titan GPU by itself is $1000. It would also be nice if Valve would port their dev tools, since just gaming on this gear is a waste.

Re: None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, what the person is saying is that if you decide to work for free, then don't complain when no one pays you.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[blahplusplus]

"Personally, I can't wait until the GPU goes the way of the math coprocessor."

Not going to happen, memory bandwidth is the big bottneck on GPU's. When's the last time you've seen a CPU with bandwidth greater then a GPU in its L2 cache?

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[gman003]

Midlevel? For non-gaming usage, perhaps. For gaming they're strictly low-end, or unusable.

There are three Intel GPUs on the desktop side - the HD 4600, the Iris 5100, and the Iris Pro 5200. In raw processing power, the first gets you 430GFLOPS, and the latter two get 830GFLOPS. For comparison, the *weakest* GPU in these Steam Machines pumps out 1880GFLOPS, and the top end maxes out around 4.5 TFLOPS.

And that's a spec that's biased towards Intel - they're more compute-heavy than bandwidth-heavy, and unfortunately most graphics tasks are bound by memory bandwidth. For Intel, the first two have a mere 25.6 GB/S of bandwidth, with Iris Pro adding an on-chip cache to bring it up to 75GB/S. But even the GeForce 660 beats that at 144GB/S, and the Titan doubles that. For those who may not be familiar, the 660 Ti (and the new-gen rebadge-with-enhancements, the 760) was considered a good medium-end card, with the vanilla 660 being for those a bit more budget-minded. The Titan, of course, is their "luxury" card, costing a full $1000, but it's currently the most powerful single-GPU card, period.

That's just their theoretical performance - the real test, of course, is actual game benchmarks. Nvidia is currently the best at getting the most performance from their hardware in actual games. AMD has more raw power, but their drivers aren't as efficient so Nvidia beats them more often than not. Intel's far worse than either - while Iris Pro should be able to go head-to-head with a GeForce 650, it actually tends to benchmark closer to the GeForce 640. Go look it up on Anandtech, if you're interested.

Now, is it impressive how much power Intel managed to get out of an IGPU? Yeah, it is. Honestly, I would be interested in seeing them scale up the design further - go from 40 EUs to 200 EUs, bolt on the memory controller from the Xeon Phi, and sell it as a dedicated card. Might be something they can do with the 22nm fabs once they move to 14nm? But in any case, calling their current offerings "medium-end" is misleading at best, and downright wrong at worst.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[binarylarry]

yes, hence "The first 300 Steam Machine prototypes to ship will use various high-end Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs"

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[TeXMaster]

Nvidia hardware isn't really clearly superior to AMD.. they rotate on who has the best hardware at various price points.

Actually, if you just look at the specifications, ATI/AMD has almost always had the (theoretically) most competitive hardware (GPU-wise), both in terms of performance/price ratio and often even in terms of raw computing power/memory bandwidth. AMD was even the first to come out with hardware support for compute on GPU (the first CTM/CAL betas came out before CUDA was ever mentioned anywhere), even if it required assembly progamming of the shaders (which you could often do without by using a layer such as BrookGPU).

However, their GPUs have been crippled by the most horrible software ecosystem possible. By and large the main culprit is ATI/AMD itself, who has constantly failed at producing high-quality, stable drivers and capable compilers for their shaders. A secondary culprit (which has finally been removed from the equation) is the architecture itself: up until the introduction of GCN, AMD shaders had a VLIW architecture (VLIW5 first, VLIW4 in the last releases before GCN) which were often not easily exploitable without heavy-duty restructuring and vectorization of your shader code: so you often found yourself with huge horsepower available, while only be able to exploit some 30-60% of it at best.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[jones_supa]

At the same time, AMD has done numerous improvements to the fglrx driver and released extensive open documentation for Radeon HD family.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[jones_supa]

The Dolphin Emu guys did a nice review of current OpenGL implementations.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[houstonbofh]

At the same time, AMD has done numerous improvements to the fglrx driver and released extensive open documentation for Radeon HD family.

This is a good thing, but they are still way behind nVidia on performance and stability. Just look in the Steam support forums to see...

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[GNious]

I wouldn't know who performs better, but after seeing (admittedly a decade ago) the shit-fest that were ATi drivers, I'm just going to avoid their products.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...insightful? Really mods? never tried Powershell I take it? And as for outlook and the registry stop thinking that every OS has to be like Linux. When it comes to windows like Apple the best tools are third party so we actually have CHOICE. There is free, there is various for pay, and YOU get to choose what you want, not what you can get some devs to donate their time for.

As far as work after the fact? when it comes to the GPUs you can lay the blame FIRMLY on Linus Torvalds shoulders. Quick what do BSD,OSX,Solarius, Windows, and OS/2 have in common that Linux does NOT have? Why a stable ABI so that GPU makers don't HAVE to constantly crap out drivers to fix what Linus Torvalds breaks this week! I can take the disc that came with my 2008 AMD 4850, pop it in and guess what? the drivers WORK. in a pinch I can use XP drivers if I like, that equals THIRTEEN YEARS of drivers I can choose from...tell me can YOU take the driver that AMD or Nvidia released in 2008 and install it on the latest Linux with ZERO fuss or muss? Hell can you do so for even 2 year old drivers?

The reason you can't is simple...Linus Torvalds. If Windows would have kept the old crappy VXD driver model for aaaaaall these years, you'd laugh right? it would be a joke to use a driver model from the early 90s on 2013 hardware right? Well guess what, Torvalds has kept his driver model virtually unchanged since 1994! His model was written at a time where ALL Linux drivers could fit on a single floppy and now? Now its a bad joke. the ONLY reason you have any working drivers AT ALL is that companies like Nvidia shell out the ass for a dev team to do nothing but fix Torvalds messes!

And the sad part? the part that just sticks it in and breaks it off? it was NOT done for design reasons, NOT done because he thinks its better on memory, or CPU or anything else, nope it was done for POLITICAL reasons! If you want proof just bring up a stable ABI to a Linux dev and see how quickly the subject becomes NOT what the merits of this or that model is, NOT the advantages or disadvantages would be, nope you'll suddenly start hearing code words like "GPL purity" and "Spirit of FOSS" which translates to "We don't care if it stays a broken mess as long as it fits our political agenda!

And it is THIS, this right here, that have kept Linux below the margin of error for 20 years and which keeps Linux so far behind that win 8, the most hated MSFT OS since MS Bob, beat the entire Linux desktop install numbers the first fricking week! I'm sure valve will learn the hard way, as did MSI,ASUS,Walmart, Best Buy, all these companies learned that Linux LOOKS nice but keeping it running? Not so nice. Its a fucking shame too as so much work has been put in it and KDE 4 is frankly a better Windows than Windows 8, there is tons of software that likewise looks and runs great, but the first time Joe and Bob go to update their new steambox and get the "fun" of having sound crapped on, or video trashed, or wireless gone? They'll go right back to Windows. Its a fucking shame and maybe when Torvalds finally retires we can get somebody that will put the OS above politics, until then its just not going anywhere long term. As a system builder I personally hate it,MSFT treats us like shit,but Linux is a money loser, keeping it running is just too much bullshit.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Dcnjoe60]

This is why open source is a stupid idea. With closed source software, people have to PAY you for your WORK. With open source, everyone rips you off and you're left complaining about how they didn't contribute, with no recourse because you were dumb enough to work for free.

Then again, without open source, there would be no Steam. So, if open source is a dumb idea and Steam is based on open source, then that would make Steam a dumb idea, right?

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Lonewolf666]

Everything Valve is doing is based on open source software.

Ahem. Not even close.

They have been porting Steam and some games to Linux, and now they are doing a Linux-based gaming PC. That are some of their activities, not all. And most of those are still closed source. If I am mistaken here and there is an Open Source Steam client, feel free to prove me wrong by pointing out the repository ;-)

This said, the whole Steam Box project might bring some very welcome improvements in Linux driver support. Actually that is the one field in which there are some reports about Valve contributing to everyone's benefit:
It seems they worked with Intel to improve their graphics drivers :-)

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Hognoxious]

Right. Because when it comes to shifting units there's a world of difference between "we will" and "our subcontractors/licensees will".

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[VirtualVirtuality]

Quick what do BSD,OSX,Solarius, Windows, and OS/2 have in common that Linux does NOT have? Why a stable ABI so that GPU makers don't HAVE to constantly crap out drivers to fix what Linus Torvalds breaks this week!

Bullshit, none of those listed has a stable ABI, for example the windows driver ABI changed from XP to XP64 and of course Vista and forwards, with a crapload of drivers no longer functioning as a result (the 'compability mode' sucks in general but even more so for drivers).

And since you don't have the source code to Windows drivers (99% chance they are proprietary) and the hardware vendors want you to buy new hardware instead of using your old they see this as a great excuse to drop support (cue the Vista driver fiasco), a ton of fully functioning older hardware was effectively deprecated when users moved from XP to Vista/Windows 7.

Windows gets support for all new hardware from vendors due to it's desktop monopoly, what has a more stable ABI benefited OSX, Solaris, OS/2 in terms of driver support? None of them has near the driver support Linux enjoys.

tell me can YOU take the driver that AMD or Nvidia released in 2008 and install it on the latest Linux with ZERO fuss or muss?

Beyond those two GPU drivers I never even have too, practically everything else is supported out-of-the box. Meanwhile those proprietary drivers are just a package manager command away, and automagically updated when I update the rest of the system. So I don't need no driver from 2008, thanks anyways.

Now its a bad joke. the ONLY reason you have any working drivers AT ALL is that companies like Nvidia shell out the ass for a dev team to do nothing but fix Torvalds messes!

Are you high? Are you equaling two discrete GPU drivers with 'any working drivers AT ALL' ?

Furthermore you seem to think that the proprietary vendors have to rewrite their entire drivers when the ABI changes, typically they need to make some changes to their shim code.

And the sad part? the part that just sticks it in and breaks it off? it was NOT done for design reasons, NOT done because he thinks its better on memory, or CPU or anything else, nope it was done for POLITICAL reasons!

It is PRACTICAL, as a proprietary driver is nothing but a black box which means it can't be fixed, debugged nor vetted against security issues, and then we have the fact that open source drivers can then be supported on all architectures where Linux runs (which is basically EVERYTHING), and not just the architectures which the proprietary vendor sees fit to support.

So yes it is by DESIGN. It is designed to be difficult (or at least not easy) to develop proprietary drivers against the kernel as it gives nothing but problems (again PRACTICAL) to the kernel developers and they want to make it clear that they don't want to support proprietary out-of-tree drivers.

And this 'hard stance' has delivered in droves as Linux has a staggering amount of hardware support out of the box, nothing else comes close, the only real holdouts these days are those discrete GPL vendors like NVIDIA and to a lesser extent AMD, meanwhile both NVIdia and AMD has recently started/increased their commitment to provide documentation for open source drivers, so things are moving in the right direction here aswell.

This in turn also helps the entire open source ecosystem, as open source drivers can be ported to other systems aswell, systems which would never see an official proprietary driver.

And finally it just makes sense, why the f*** should I be prevented from using the HARDWARE I BUY in the operating system of my choosing just because the hardware vendor doesn't find it worthy of support?

You can keep your proprietary-friendly, more stable driver ABI. I'll take open and thus: debuggable, improvable, security-examinable drivers (heck, entire system actually) and the largest-by-far hardware support out-of-the-box.

Re:None use intel or amd for graphics?

[Mashdar]

I totally agree. I would LOVE to purchase AMD hardware, but I just can't justify the driver headaches. I have a Llano laptop and a 785G-based HTPC, both of which exhibit inferior performance whether I'm on open source or binary blob drivers. (For the HTPC I ended up buying a fanless low-mid nVidia card. WTB proper vsync...) On the other hand, back when I still had XP on my gaming desktop, my 8800GT would actually give me better OpenGL performance on Linux than Windows.

Not suprised

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is surprised by this choice. AMD could've had this one in the bag with their APUs if they just kicked themselves more in the ass when it comes to their drivers.

Re:Not suprised

[AvitarX]

Yeah, they kind of messed up treating Linux as a PR platform rather than a serious one to develop for.

They still have the 3 major consoles, or 3 out of 4 if steam box takes off big, but if they focused on real open source drivers like Intel did they could of had a big win here.

Especially with Valve basically saying "we love open source video drivers, it was great using intel GPUs to port our games".

Re:Not suprised

[ifiwereasculptor]

No, they couldn't. APUs still aren't good enough for gaming. An A10-6800k on its own costs about the same and performs markedly worse than an Athlon x4 750k + Radeon 7750.

Re:Not suprised

[Issarlk]

1001 units ; I'll get one too.

Intel i3

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Intel i3 is now a high-end CPU?

I think a more accurate characterization would be "will use various Intel CPUs".

16GB memory is pretty damn nice, though.

Re:Intel i3

[spire3661]

An i3 is part of the premium family line. Its a solid chip with no real weaknesses compared to i5 other then processor count. i5s come with only 2 cores too.

Re:Intel i3

[0123456]

Intel i3 is now a high-end CPU?

It runs some games faster than an 8-core AMD...

Re:Intel i3

[0123456]

Sure, the games which run in a single thread.

Which is a lot of them. And it's presumably faster on games that use three threads or less (the i3 is hyperhreading, isn't it, so it won't be as fast as a real quad?).

Re:Intel i3

[Shinobi]

Though the 2-core i5's support SMT instead, which makes them quite a bit faster than the i3's

Re:Intel i3

[Shinobi]

Even most multithreaded games run faster on Intel. AMD didn't so much drop the ball as they dropped the soap......

Re: Intel i3

[O('_')O_Bush]

But not the i3. The 8350 fits between the i5 and i7 in both single and multi threaded games.

Where it loses is in power usage.

Re: Intel i3

[Shinobi]

The 8350 is on equal footing with the Ivy Bridge i3-3220 in Civ 5, which is multithread friendly, and gets beaten slightly by the same i3 in Shogun 2 which is CPU intensive and fairly decent at using multiple threads... However, the Sandy Bridge i7-2600 convincingly beats it in both games.... That's a chip that's well over one and a half year older....

Not to mention that many of the Intel chips from the Ivy Bridge and Haswell series are more power-efficient than the AMD A-series, and coupled with a low-power 5x or later nvidia GPU actually gets better graphics performance AND still retain better power efficiency.

AMD are on the ropes...

Re:Intel i3

[apcullen]

It runs some games faster than an 8-core AMD...

Ouch. And probably true for most games, not just some of them. To be fair though, I think most game developers target intel chips and use intel compilers. I will bet that with both playstation and xbox going aggressively multi-core, developers will change that, and we'll begin to see it in benchmarks.

Re:Intel i3

[Blaskowicz]

All i3 have SMT, too.
In fact, if it's the mobile offering you're thinking about, there's hardly any difference between i3/i5/i7 (there's dual core i7), they're all crippled by TDP and you pay a premium for things like a 5% faster clock in some turbo mode. A desktop i3 is much faster than a mobile dual core i7, and compares favorably to a mobile quad core i7 even.

Re:Intel i3

[Mashdar]

AFAIK they only offer hyperthreading on i7 now.

Re:Intel i3

[Shinobi]

No, I'm comparing the desktop offerings strictly

Quite a bit of hardware

[stewsters]

Isn't the Titan like a thousand USD? That's going to produce noticeably higher resolution than can be displayed on a 1080p tv at max settings on the most demanding games currently available. Are they future proofing for 3d 4k tvs with high refresh rates?

Re:Quite a bit of hardware

[LikwidCirkel]

Who's to say one has to connect to a TV? LCD monitors at 2560x1600 or 2560x1440 are pretty common nowadays, and yes, something like a Titan or dual 760s in SLI mode would make a big difference with these kinds of resolutions.

Re:Quite a bit of hardware

[Qzukk]

It does seem to be overkill, especially when you realize that the majority of games will be getting played on and streamed from the windows PC elsewhere.

Maybe the titan ships separately for use in the PC (actually, I could see a custom video card for this streaming being a considerable boost, especially for anyone who's ever ran fraps and watched their framerate go to shit).

Re:Quite a bit of hardware

[Tapewolf]

It does seem to be overkill, especially when you realize that the majority of games will be getting played on and streamed from the windows PC elsewhere.

I don't think that's the long-term goal, though. The whole project seems to have kicked into gear because the Windows App Store means they can't rely on Windows indefinitely, and they seem to be trying to get devs to port to Linux natively. That entails a beefier GPU than you'd need for a pure streaming solution.

Re:Quite a bit of hardware

[rsmith-mac]

If anything Titan is a good test for a max-TDP card with a blower type cooler in a confined space.

At 250W it's certainly at the top of the TDP range for a product like a Steam Machine, and it was in part designed for use in small form factor PCs and other devices where the card had to be responsible for its own cooling. So throwing a Titan in there should provide some good feedback on whether Valve's custom design can handle a suitably built card this powerful.

Re:Quite a bit of hardware

[tlhIngan]

I don't think that's the long-term goal, though. The whole project seems to have kicked into gear because the Windows App Store means they can't rely on Windows indefinitely, and they seem to be trying to get devs to port to Linux natively. That entails a beefier GPU than you'd need for a pure streaming solution.

Exactly, that's the goal. You have to realize that Steam is the original curated App Store - sorry Apple, you are NOT the first.

With both the Windows App Store and Mac App Store, Steam has competition. And we know the MAS is starting to get some AAA titles as well as indie games. So Steam will have to compete - though it does have advantages like cross platform.

Enter Linux. There is no real App Store on Linux, at least one that that's universal across all distributions and such. Hence Valve's niche for Steam - if you can standardize Linux for developers, offer a universal DRM solution and basically layer over the difficulties of developing on Linux, it's possible to have a good chance to succeed.

And Steam has made moves to offer more than games - so general applications can be purchased and obtained via Steam

Steam offers a way to have stable binary APIs and library version management for Linux so binary closed-source applications and games can be sold for the platform. Add in auto-update capabilities and payment handling, and that should encourage success on Linux.

Linux folks have always wanted a way to get the big commercial apps on their platform - Steam offers a perfect distribution mechanism. Plus with name recognition means it'll probably be a successful app store.

Re:Quite a bit of hardware

[shia84]

Got a raging one for Steam? Steam is hardly original, except maybe on Windows.

No real App Store? Are you aware that you can buy proprietary software, music, etc. in the Software Center on Ubuntu, Mint and Suse right now? Sure, it's not universal across all distros, but Fedora and Debian reject proprietary offerings on principle (and still have tens of thousands of non-proprietary programs in their sofware managers) and the rest are irrelevant in terms of market share, so Steam for Linux follows the same distribution curve.

Steam has friend lists and achievement notifications, but that's not exactly needed for an application store... while both APT and RPM are technically vastly superior (Steam doesn't even support delta updates, version hold-ups, downgrades or concurrent dependency resolution) and have been around quite a bit longer.

However, I'm pretty confident it'll find a niche because of the built-in social networking, where it has to compete with Desura. But it doesn't "standardise Linux for developers" except in the packaging (which is somewhat around 1% of a porting effort), doesn't offer "stable binary APIs" (that'd be drivers, kernel and middleware/engines) and can't hope to improve on the present library version management.

That said, yeah, it's nice to have one more option!
Sorry if I've damped your enthusiasm, no offense meant, but your comment struck me as starry-eyed ;)

AMD is gonna get reamed

[Arkiel]

Nvidia has better openGL drivers, and has partnered with Valve to develop the streaming capability of SteamOS (Shield apparently uses the same tech). Now the prototype comes with Nvidia hardware. Suddenly, this longtime Radeon-head is feeling uneasy about the future of his $300 year-old videocard...

Re:AMD is gonna get reamed

[Bacon Bits]

AMD is going to be just fine. Remember, both the PS4 and XBone are AMD.

Re:AMD is gonna get reamed

[B1oodAnge1]

Whoa, you're right. AMD *is* screwed!

Re:AMD is gonna get reamed

[Shinobi]

Except that AMD already has an uncomfortably small profit margin on their product, and Microsoft and Sony WILL have negotiated that down even more...

Re:AMD is gonna get reamed

[Kjella]

Whoa, you're right. AMD *is* screwed!

The real question is whether AMD is trying to use this to change gears or not. After all, the PS4 and XBone aren't going to be replaced for many years with something that might or might not be AMD so if they want to exit the performance market and enter the ... well, whatever they're trying to do with APUs and ARM like embedded and microservers and custom hybrids and whatnot then this would be the time. They've bagged the current generation fo consoles, exit stage right. They've been very quiet about any successor to FX-8350 and their server roadmap is more of the current Opterons so well... Kaveri is fine but it's nothing but the current Steamroller cores combined with GCN graphics, as a CPU it's no better than what's already here.

I guess we'll get another indication in two weeks when their Q3 earnings call comes out, the geek in me would like them to succeed but the economist sees very many big red blinkenlights in their last economic reports. People here like to point out how competitive their prices are but the reality is that AMD prices them the way they need to sell, they're losing money now but if they raise prices they lose sales and also lose money. Last time they were royally screwed and losing money they spun off their fabs and got huge external investors in GloFo, this time around they either stand or fall. They desperately need more profitable business and ordinarily I'd say Intel wouldn't squeeze them to bankruptcy but right now Intel is in a duel with ARM and if AMD is stuck in the crossfire, well....

Re:AMD is gonna get reamed

[Blaskowicz]

No, Steamroller is a new core that supposedly fixes the slow performance, desperate fans expect an up to 30% improvment - well, maybe it's 5 to 20% better, and that's not counting it's 4-core only, not 8. So I'm hoping it works somewhat, allowing AMD to climb out of Core2/Phenom II performance and into Sandy Bridge performance.
The APUs themselves will be hardly useful for linux gaming, but are a much cheaper alternative to Iris 5200 in Windows laptops, I guess. A Kaveri with disabled GPU plus a nvidia graphics card will be an option for those who assemble their own desktop.

Because only nVidia drivers do the trick

[Sycraft-fu]

If you want Linux 3D graphics that are:

1) As fast as you get on Windows.
2) Support all the latest OpenGL features.
3) Have a full implementation of the latest OpenGL spec.
4) Are solid and stable.

Then the binary nVidia drivers are it. Nothing else comes close. Well for games, particularly new games, this matters. They are making use of the high end features modern GPUs have, they need high speed rendering, etc.

If another company wants to step up their Linux game then great, but right now it is go nV or go home. Their binary drivers are just head and shoulders above the rest. That may not matter for typical desktop use when the card is doing little else other than some desktop composition and maybe accelerated video playback but it matters a lot if you are trying to make a game render using the latest OpenGL 4.3/4.4 features and have it extremely fast and stable.

Re:Because only nVidia drivers do the trick

[phorm]

I used to think that, but actually these days I've had more luck with the (binary) AMD drivers than the (binary) nVidia ones.
The biggest problems I have with AMD seem to be in things that use nvidia-intended extensions (like getting terrain mapping to work in Ogre)

Re:Because only nVidia drivers do the trick

[houstonbofh]

Go into the Steam support forums. You will see that most of the people having graphics issues are running AMD cards...

Re:Because only nVidia drivers do the trick

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but "solid and stable" isn't /exactly/ the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of the nvidia binary pieces of shit.

Yeah, they are fast. And indeed, they implement a whole lot of nifty stuff.

But I've seen a LOT more unexplained crashed with nvidia's drivers spewing stuff into dmesg than I have with nouveau, the intel drivers, or even amd's binary drivers (and this is across a decent number of different card models and computers).
And when you start wanting peculiar stuff (like a non 80x25 textmode / framebuffer, or triple displays), you are shit outta luck with nvidia drivers/cards; nouveau at least handles the framebuffer thing decently well.

Nouveau is a lot more solid and stable, albeit not nearly as fast. I'd cross out every other vendor of GPUs for Linux rigs if they got their collective heads out of their collective asses and made a proper effort to get nouveau up to snuff. Now though, AMD's GPU drivers are more stable (and 6-display-rigs are easier to make work without fuss), let alone the open-source-from-the-start Intel drivers, which, for desktop work, are more than enough most of the time.

For games the nvidia linux blob may indeed be nifty. Though with games, you don't exactly expect months of uptime, nor do you particularly mind if it crashes every now and then. For serious work their hodge-podge attempts at being useful are disgraceful, particularly considering they do have some pretty nice hardware.

Re:Because only nVidia drivers do the trick

[Telvin_3d]

I've seen a LOT more unexplained crashed with nvidia's drivers spewing stuff into dmesg than I have with nouveau, the intel drivers, or even amd's binary drivers

Sure, but what distro/versions/other hardware are you running? At a guess, I think nVidia had little trouble ironing out all the bugs for a single targeted setup like this. One hardware spec and known OS/packages? Easy. It's supporting every frankenbox and smashed together OS that causes them ulcers.

Re:Because only nVidia drivers do the trick

[foobar bazbot]

And when you start wanting peculiar stuff (like a non 80x25 textmode / framebuffer, or triple displays), you are shit outta luck with nvidia drivers/cards; nouveau at least handles the framebuffer thing decently well.

Simply not true WRT non-80x25. I had a GeForce FX something-or-other in my desktop (back when such a beast was in production), and had no trouble getting a 160x100 textmode, though in practice I used 136x85 most of the time. (I found 136x85 comfortable on my 19" monitor; the main purpose of 160x100 was to show off with mplayer+aalib.) The textmode coexisted with nvidia's binary drivers for X, no problem.

I used svgatextmode with the Riva TNT2 driver (for young whippersnappers, the Riva series was the predecessor to the GeForce series, and for some operations such as needed for establishing textmodes they are compatible); svgatextmode is no longer maintained, so I had to patch svgatextmode's PCI ID list for my card to be recognized as TNT2 compatible, but then it worked just fine.

(Yes, I'm aware that the preceding sentence is a perfect illustration of why "the year of Linux on the desktop" keeps being prophesied and never happens. But I got my 160x100 text mode on my desktop, and that's all I can be bothered to care about!)

Re:Because only nVidia drivers do the trick

[Blaskowicz]

I always wanted a 80x50 real text mode (not graphic), I have no idea how to do that. I like the old IBM characters and reliability, and it was supported and very easy to use in MS-DOS and Windows XP. Sadly Vista/7/8 removed the text modes.

On linux, I once managed to change graphical text mode to real 80x25 text mode (it was running at 1600x1200 on a small CRT so very painful), another time I changed the graphical text resolution to 1024x768 (I don't know what character width/height that gives). But it is painful to do that, as I would just try some random grub parameters and stuff changes over time (Grub 2, or the warning that "vga=normal is deprecated")

Re:Because only nVidia drivers do the trick

[foobar bazbot]

My experience was a while ago; I'm not sure what all's been deprecated in newer kernels, as I've been using framebuffer consoles for years. For a while, I found the framebuffer console unbearably slow, but after I discovered how to enable acceleration in vesafb, it wasn't real bad.

But AFAIK, the recipe is still to somehow boot your system up in VGA text mode, any text mode (I'd have said "vga=normal" was a good start... that deprecation message is new to me, but google suggests using "GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=text", so maybe search for that), then use svgatextmode to twiddle stuff. If your initial text mode has the right number of columns, and a suitable number of lines, you don't even need any of the drivers to work -- you can just change it from 16-line font (for 80x25) to an 8-line font (you get 80x50), without changing any timing info. There's also a limited selection of somewhat-extended modes that will work on any VGA-compatible card, by using the various graphics mode clocks in text mode.

More advanced modes (like my 160x100) require support for setting arbitrary dot-clocks instead of using the predefined ones, and that will require identifying a driver that works, then possibly some PCI ID hackery to make it use that driver. But if all you want is 80x50, that part's unneeded.

Re:Because only nVidia drivers do the trick

[Blaskowicz]

Thanks!
svga seems to be the old school interface, not really safe to muck with on modern hardware/modern distro when there's the "framebuffer driver" or vesafb already. But I have the option of ruining everything then salvaging it with ssh :-).
I never knew 80x25 and 80x50 were the same mode (at least monitor wise), all those years I thought one was 640x200 pixels and the other one double the res.. In truth both are 720x400. It's all bog standard VGA.

Re:Because only nVidia drivers do the trick

[phorm]

For Linux games?
There's not a huge selection of "big" games to compare, but I've definitely seen my share of bugs on DOTA2 and L4D2 with nVidia cards (GT640 and GT240, for the most part).
Actually, the bigger annoyances don't seem to be graphical at all, but more related to irritating little sound stutters and issue. I'd guess this is probably due to crappy Pulseaudio but I haven't had the time to rip it out again since my last upgrade.

Re:Because only nVidia drivers do the trick

[ADRA]

DOTA 2 stutters for audio when the map first loads on Windows as well. That would be an engine limitation when loading in hero textures evidently. Now if you're getting them in-game reliably, that's another matter. I've played a little DOTA 2 through Fedora and Pulse and haven't run into any notable show stoppers, though I have heard minor sound stutters, I'm sure this is more engine related unfortunately. They seem to have a linked main loop that can cause sound buffers to empty before being refilled while taxing graphics / I/O.

Re:Because only nVidia drivers do the trick

[phorm]

Yeah, I've noticed a brief stutter when loading the initial map in windows. On Linux it's more pronounced (longer), with a lot of stutters in the menu system as well.
Maybe I'm unfairly blaming Pulse because I've had experience with it causing such issues on other apps/games though.

Do you notice any issues on the 'nix client where the map loads and then gets stuck for awhile before coming into the "player draft" late? That's another one I've seen which doesn't seem to be particular to the graphics card or sounds.

Re:NVIDIA Binary Blob

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be part of the root filesystem and exist as a .ko file. There is no GPL violation here.

I still don't understand...

[mythosaz]

A week of news on this, and I still don't get it.

Other than promoting Linux, why do I want a new "Steam Machine" rather than simply upgrading my desktop, and running an OS that a larger percentage of the AAA games run on? I've already got HDMI out. Can't I just buy a controller? What do I actually GAIN by running this machine over just downloading the next Steam title to my existing desktop -- or building a machine of my choice (on Windows) and putting it in one of a dozen cases that look nice next to the TV?

A prettier case?
Fewer native games?

I'm not nagging. Help me understand what I get here...

Re:I still don't understand...

[jandrese]

If you have a gaming PC already, then just run steam and put it in Big Picture mode if you want the same experience. This is for people who don't have gaming PCs and/or want to play in the living room on their TV.

Re:I still don't understand...

[Gaygirlie]

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.

Re:I still don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's more of a long term thing.

Valve is threatened by the way Microsoft is heading. The signs point to MS trying to build a walled garden around Windows, e.g. all software sold via the Windows Store. That doesn't leave much room for Valve's Steam, so they try to diversify in order to survive.

Not sure what the killer argument for gamers is, though. Sure, less dependence on MS and the way they're heading would be nice, and a competitor to Windows as far as PC gaming goes can't hurt. Then again, Valve runs just another walled garden where it dictates who gets in and who doesn't. Plus it has one of the most restrictive DRM schemes out there.

I guess it's hoping for the lesser of two evils in the face of an uncertain future kind of thing?

Re:I still don't understand...

[gman003]

Quite simply, this product is not for you. This product is for people who want a console-like simplicity of installation and use, but want the power and library of a PC and are willing to pay for it.

I do not think the high-end ones are going to be at all successful. I think the low-end ones may be useful for streaming games to a TV, since most Steam gamers already have a powerful desktop, and this will bypass the Windows/Linux incompatibilities. And, since it's there, it will probably see more and more ports coming out. But it's not going to be a huge success, at least at first. They're trying to topple Windows - we've been trying to do that for how long now?

Now, the controller is more exciting. I'd buy one of those. But the Steam Machines, even SteamOS, have minimal initial utility.

Re:I still don't understand...

[flimflammer]

The whole "Steam Machine" thing is designed to penetrate the living room. It's basically just a PC masquerading as a console. There's a good chance you're probably not their target market if that is meaningless to you.

Re:I still don't understand...

[Tough Love]

It's basically just a PC masquerading as a console.

Much like the XBox, except not locked down and without the Microsoft Tax.

Re:I still don't understand...

[recoiledsnake]

If you have a gaming PC already, then just run steam and put it in Big Picture mode if you want the same experience. This is for people who don't have gaming PCs and/or want to play in the living room on their TV.

Uhh, then what are the gaming consoles for? PS4 and Xbox One are launching very soon.

Re:I still don't understand...

[recoiledsnake]

Instead coming with a Steam tax... meet the new boss... just like the old boss.

Re:I still don't understand...

[timeOday]

If I bought one it would be in the hopes that whatever configuration it came with would be better supported (by either valve or the game developers) than a random collection of hardware.

Today I upgraded Ubuntu to the latest stable version and just wasted my whole evening trying to get it to recognize my *keyboard* of all things (which worked on the previous version). It still isn't recognized after trying 3 different kernels. Of course the upgrade installed the wrong video drivers (which segfaulted) too, and didn't automatically load the module for my sound card so it wasn't working either. (I also assumed it would break VMWare Workstation, and it did).

And that is why you choose a vendor-supported configuration. I'm getting too old for this.

Re:I still don't understand...

[recoiledsnake]

The Steam cut of the games they will sell on top of Steam OS.

Re:I still don't understand...

[flimflammer]

Your post makes no sense. Care to enlighten us how Valve is "just like the old boss"?

You're completely free to create and run any number of free and open source games on SteamOS, none of which need to come from Steam itself, none of which need to be vetted by Valve. It's an open platform, completely free to use and modify. How is that even remotely similar to an Xbox or Microsoft?

I think you're spouting nonsense FUD.

Re: I still don't understand...

[tom229]

Nothing.

This is the beauty of this platform. It gives you choice. If you're someone that doesn't want to pay for Windows licensing, or build a custom gaming computer you can also install Steam OS, or buy their pre-built machine, or buy a pre-built machine from a third party.

Valve is creating a open gaming platform around their Steam service. It's a good thing for gamers.

Re:I still don't understand...

[deathguppie]

I believe Valve is consciously creating their own environment here. Much like Xbox, and PlayStation, they want to be able to offer you an end to end experience, where the software and hardware are tuned for performance. This may mean that Steam OS will give up some features as a generic linux OS to gain performance for gaming. In the case of the Steam Machine, this will more than likely mean that the hardware will have specially tuned drivers pushing it.

So think of taking your Windows machine, and passing it to to a team of experts who would then strip the OS down, rebuild it, and tune it specifically for the hardware you have installed, so that it runs games at max performance. In this case your best Windows 8 machine may not perform as well as a mid level (hardware) Steam Machine.

Re:I still don't understand...

[stub667]

You get more games targeted at your hardware. You are quite correct that most of us existing PC gamers are not going to buy a Steambox for maybe the next 5 years or so because we effectively already have one. But we will certainly benefit from the increased market share. It will also be good if the PC games needing a controller are targeting a standard one.

On the flip side, console owners may start expecting mouse and keyboard support for games that benefit from them. It will be interesting to see if games stop being 'dumbed down' for consoles and instead the optimal controls for the game design are chosen.

Re:I still don't understand...

[keith_nt4]

This is the reason I'm kind of interested in this: I have I think ~180 steam games, very few of which run on linux natively. Hypothetically I could take my really low end laptop I bought in 2010 for $300, connect it to my TV via HDMI and play all that whole library of games (with valves new super-special gamepad) via the stream-over-network feature. Based on the promo materials/FAQs I've read I've been lead to believe this is an achievable scenario. So silent low end laptop in gaming room, noisy high end gaming PC is different room. Sounds good to me...?

If I bought a PS4 or Xbone I would have to start over buying new games/rebuild the frineds list (I assume). With SteamOS, again making assumptions, I've got my whole existing library that won't be obsoleted witch each iteration. Does that answer the question?

Here are some links/more info:
http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamController/
http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS
http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/

Yay

[Windwraith]

Glad they are using nvidia video, it always worked the best on linux. I kept hearing rumors about them having AMD video and it was really making me not want a Steam Machine, but now I am willing to give it a go!

nvidia just announced...

[Anonymous Coward]

surprised no one mentioned that nvidia promised more documentation for the nouveau driver http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQ2NzY

I think we'll see it in our lifetime

[Sycraft-fu]

It will be some time, but onboard graphics have gone from a joke to usable for games in a short time and are moving forward. As we keep making things more powerful, it becomes more possible. Intel thinks they will be able to scale to 5nm around 2020, with transistor density like that, it might just happen.

We'll see.

Re:I think we'll see it in our lifetime

[binarylarry]

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.

Re:I think we'll see it in our lifetime

[symbolset]

For this sort of system the Intel CPU is a glorified I/O concentrator. An accessory to the main compute unit.

Drivers appear to (slowly) get better

[Lonewolf666]

If you compare benchmarks where multiple generations of GPUs compete against each other, such as the Passmark benchmark, later AMD GPUs seem to have a better ratio of benchmark scores to theoretical computing power (as given on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units )

Examples:
Radeon HD 3850: 427.5 GFLOPS, Passmark score of 532
Radeon HD 3870: 497.3 GFLOPS, Passmark score of 744
Radeon HD 4850: 1000 GFLOPS, Passmark score of 1043
Radeon HD 4870: 1200 GFLOPS, Passmark score of 1361
Radeon HD 5750: 1008 GFLOPS, Passmark score of 1399
Radeon HD 7750: 922 GFLOPS (at 900 MHz), Passmark score of 1624

The 38xx surprise by bucking the trend - maybe some AMD developer had a bright moment there? But in general, drivers for current cards seem more efficient. In the 7750, the change in architecture may have helped.

For Linux in particular, the open source drivers are gradually getting closer (at least to the AMD Catalyst driver). For some older and presumably simpler games, the reviews on http://www.phoronix.com/ already show 80% of the performance of Catalyst. In other, more demanding, tests they still suck but the long term trend is encouraging.

Re:.ko could be GPL violation

[Blaskowicz]

The kernel module is an open source shims that is built on driver installation, and communicates with the proprietary software.