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Forums - Gaming - Alienware Steam Machines to release annually, “there will be no customization options”

EdHieron on 21 January 2014
nanarchy said:
EdHieron said:

I think it's a good idea if it comes out at a similar price to the One or PS4 because it will probably be more advanced at first than the two Next Gen consoles and you'll probably be able to play better versions of the games than what will be available on One and PS4, but then a couple of years down the road instead of five to seven with the consoles if you want a system that's more capable of playing the games technologically wise, then you can pick up that year's model.

I also think it's good if you want to play the best versions of the games ie. the PC ones, but you don't really know how to build or add new tech to your computer.

As long as it is in the $500 range and more powerful than One and PS4, I'm intrigued.

The ones in the $500 range are not more advanced than Ps4/Xbone, you need to dish out significantly more cash if you want that. The $500 ones are the low spec, entry level ones.

 

The CyberPower and IBuyPower Models include the AMD Radeon R 9 270 X  Graphics Card for $499 and that's much better than the Xbox One for the same price  

 

and the AlienWare one is supposed to cost $499 too and be the most powerful of the bunch ( http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/alienware-steam-machine-to-cost-as-much-as-xbox-one-claims-that-a-bargain ), so if true I definitely believe that's a bargain versus the competition.



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nanarchy on 21 January 2014
EdHieron said:
nanarchy said:
EdHieron said:

I think it's a good idea if it comes out at a similar price to the One or PS4 because it will probably be more advanced at first than the two Next Gen consoles and you'll probably be able to play better versions of the games than what will be available on One and PS4, but then a couple of years down the road instead of five to seven with the consoles if you want a system that's more capable of playing the games technologically wise, then you can pick up that year's model.

I also think it's good if you want to play the best versions of the games ie. the PC ones, but you don't really know how to build or add new tech to your computer.

As long as it is in the $500 range and more powerful than One and PS4, I'm intrigued.

The ones in the $500 range are not more advanced than Ps4/Xbone, you need to dish out significantly more cash if you want that. The $500 ones are the low spec, entry level ones.

 

The CyberPower and IBuyPower Models include the AMD Radeon R 9 270 X  Graphics Card for $499 and that's much better than the Xbox One for the same price  

 

and the AlienWare one is supposed to cost $499 too and be the most powerful of the bunch ( http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/alienware-steam-machine-to-cost-as-much-as-xbox-one-claims-that-a-bargain ), so if true I definitely believe that's a bargain versus the competition.


Be interesting to see what the confirmed specs are. current articles (i.e. ones posted after the verge) list the entry level one for $499 as an R7 250 not the R9 270. e.g. http://www.hardware-360.com/inside-the-ibuypower-steam-machine/



Somini on 21 January 2014

This is why PC gaming is uninteresting to most gamers. Console gaming really is a lot cheaper, even though the games on average are not and the fact that they hold back the potential of PC gaming.



nanarchy on 21 January 2014
shikamaru317 said:
EdHieron said:
nanarchy said:
EdHieron said:

I think it's a good idea if it comes out at a similar price to the One or PS4 because it will probably be more advanced at first than the two Next Gen consoles and you'll probably be able to play better versions of the games than what will be available on One and PS4, but then a couple of years down the road instead of five to seven with the consoles if you want a system that's more capable of playing the games technologically wise, then you can pick up that year's model.

I also think it's good if you want to play the best versions of the games ie. the PC ones, but you don't really know how to build or add new tech to your computer.

As long as it is in the $500 range and more powerful than One and PS4, I'm intrigued.

The ones in the $500 range are not more advanced than Ps4/Xbone, you need to dish out significantly more cash if you want that. The $500 ones are the low spec, entry level ones.

 

The CyberPower and IBuyPower Models include the AMD Radeon R 9 270 X  Graphics Card for $499 and that's much better than the Xbox One for the same price  

 

and the AlienWare one is supposed to cost $499 too and be the most powerful of the bunch ( http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/alienware-steam-machine-to-cost-as-much-as-xbox-one-claims-that-a-bargain ), so if true I definitely believe that's a bargain versus the competition.


The R9 270x is technically more powerful than both the Xbox One's and PS4's GPU, it has 2560 GFLOPS compared to the Xbox One's 1310 GFLOPS and the PS4's 1840 GFLOPS, but that doesn't take into account console optimization. The console versions of games are optimized specifically for each console, whereas PC games can't be optimized for a certain set of specs, as the developer has to make the game work on as many different PC's as possible, each with different specs. The bottom tier $500 Steam Machines should be able to match or exceed the performance of the Xbox One and PS4 for now, but as the generation progresses developers will learn tricks to get the most out of the the Xbox One and PS4 while optimizing their games for the consoles and that $500 Steam Box will fall behind graphically. For example, I built a $500 gaming PC in 2008, it has a GeForce 9800gt. The 9800gt has 504 GFLOPS, double that of Xbox 360's 240 GFLOPS. However, there are currently games releasing for the 360 that my PC can't play anymore, my 9800 GT is below the minimum spec (my CPU is too for that matter).

There's another matter to consider as well. Steam Machines come with SteamOS, which is Linux based. Currently the number of games that get released for Linux is quite small, if you want to be able to play many of the latest games on your Steam Machine you're going to need to buy Windows, which is going to cost you at least an extra $50. 

Now redo your calculations using the card that is "actually" in the ibuypower one, the R7 250 (they hope to put in a 260). You won't even be able to run current games at 60fps with high details let alone games that are coming out in 6 or 12 months. For $499 you get a low to midrange gaming pc that will struggle on even current stuff.



Vashyo on 21 January 2014

ibuypowers steam machine is the only worthwhile one, from the ones I've seen. But you can still get cheaper better alternative if you build your own setup.

^ remember that they will have mantle API on some future games. BF4 first game this month which apparently has 45% performance increase over DX which is a huge boost and makes 270x punch a weightclass higher than it is. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2014/01/09/amd-mantle-battlefield-4-demo-show-45-perfo/1

There is no linux version on the works yet though, so windows has to be installed for now.



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EdHieron on 21 January 2014
shikamaru317 said:
EdHieron said:
nanarchy said:
EdHieron said:

I think it's a good idea if it comes out at a similar price to the One or PS4 because it will probably be more advanced at first than the two Next Gen consoles and you'll probably be able to play better versions of the games than what will be available on One and PS4, but then a couple of years down the road instead of five to seven with the consoles if you want a system that's more capable of playing the games technologically wise, then you can pick up that year's model.

I also think it's good if you want to play the best versions of the games ie. the PC ones, but you don't really know how to build or add new tech to your computer.

As long as it is in the $500 range and more powerful than One and PS4, I'm intrigued.

The ones in the $500 range are not more advanced than Ps4/Xbone, you need to dish out significantly more cash if you want that. The $500 ones are the low spec, entry level ones.

 

The CyberPower and IBuyPower Models include the AMD Radeon R 9 270 X  Graphics Card for $499 and that's much better than the Xbox One for the same price  

 

and the AlienWare one is supposed to cost $499 too and be the most powerful of the bunch ( http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/alienware-steam-machine-to-cost-as-much-as-xbox-one-claims-that-a-bargain ), so if true I definitely believe that's a bargain versus the competition.


The R9 270x is technically more powerful than both the Xbox One's and PS4's GPU, it has 2560 GFLOPS compared to the Xbox One's 1310 GFLOPS and the PS4's 1840 GFLOPS, but that doesn't take into account console optimization. The console versions of games are optimized specifically for each console, whereas PC games can't be optimized for a certain set of specs, as the developer has to make the game work on as many different PC's as possible, each with different specs. The bottom tier $500 Steam Machines should be able to match or exceed the performance of the Xbox One and PS4 for now, but as the generation progresses developers will learn tricks to get the most out of the the Xbox One and PS4 while optimizing their games for the consoles and that $500 Steam Box will fall behind graphically. For example, I built a $500 gaming PC in 2008, it has a GeForce 9800gt. The 9800gt has 504 GFLOPS, double that of Xbox 360's 240 GFLOPS. However, there are currently games releasing for the 360 that my PC can't play anymore, my 9800 GT is below the minimum spec (my CPU is too for that matter).

There's another matter to consider as well. Steam Machines come with SteamOS, which is Linux based. Currently the number of games that get released for Linux is quite small, if you want to be able to play many of the latest games on your Steam Machine you're going to need to buy Windows, which is going to cost you at least an extra $50. 


But AlienWare is going to release a new model each year which means if you buy the launch model ( as I've decided to do ), then when its graphics start to lag behind as you described above, you can buy that year's model ( which for the same price as your original ) will be two to three years even more technologically superior to your PS4 or Xbox One which will be the same static machines for five to seven years. 



nanarchy on 21 January 2014
Vashyo said:
ibuypowers steam machine is the only worthwhile one, from the ones I've seen. But you can still get cheaper better alternative if you build your own setup.

^ remember that they will have mantle API on some future games. BF4 first game this month which apparently has 45% performance increase over DX which is a huge boost and makes 270x punch a weightclass higher than it is. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2014/01/09/amd-mantle-battlefield-4-demo-show-45-perfo/1

There is no linux version on the works yet though, so windows has to be installed for now.

Mantle doesn't magically make the GPU 45% faster as there isn't that much overhead in DirectX and OpenGL. However what it does do is if you are CPU bound you will get significant benefits and need a less powerful CPU to fully utilise the GPU. Mantle in this situation does nothing much for the graphics card but does allow them to get away with a much weaker CPU. the 45% figure is also BS, it was for a contrived demo by Oxide.



Vashyo on 22 January 2014
nanarchy said:
Vashyo said:
ibuypowers steam machine is the only worthwhile one, from the ones I've seen. But you can still get cheaper better alternative if you build your own setup.

^ remember that they will have mantle API on some future games. BF4 first game this month which apparently has 45% performance increase over DX which is a huge boost and makes 270x punch a weightclass higher than it is. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2014/01/09/amd-mantle-battlefield-4-demo-show-45-perfo/1

There is no linux version on the works yet though, so windows has to be installed for now.

Mantle doesn't magically make the GPU 45% faster as there isn't that much overhead in DirectX and OpenGL. However what it does do is if you are CPU bound you will get significant benefits and need a less powerful CPU to fully utilise the GPU. Mantle in this situation does nothing much for the graphics card but does allow them to get away with a much weaker CPU. the 45% figure is also BS, it was for a contrived demo by Oxide.

45% wasnt from oxide demo, this came from CES during BF4 showing later. Starswarm demo had triple the performance gain compared to the DX version of the demo during APU13. :)

It doesn't make GPUs faster you're right about that, mantle cuts down the DX overhead even further. Using mantle API your GPU can process about 9x more drawcalls compared to DX. This opens up more of that performance power that your GPU allready posesses, that it couldn't use in the past. It can even be used to leverage console optimizations to PC version of your game.

We will soon see some more performance numbers on BF4 and thief coming next month I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deuI7Vpd6zc heres the starswarm demo btw with performance counter on the upper left



EdHieron on 22 January 2014
shikamaru317 said:
EdHieron said:

But AlienWare is going to release a new model each year which means if you buy the launch model ( as I've decided to do ), then when its graphics start to lag behind as you described above, you can buy that year's model ( which for the same price as your original ) will be two to three years even more technologically superior to your PS4 or Xbox One which will be the same static machines for five to seven years. 

Sure, but that's going to cost you quite a bit of extra money compared to a PS4 or Xbox One. Even if you sell your first Steam Machine used to somebody to help pay for Alienware's latest model you'll be looking at like $800 dollars total. Sure Steam's cheaper games compared to consoles will make some of that back, but it's still kind of pricey. I'm not saying that a Steam Machine is a bad option, it's definitely viable, but then so is getting a console. I'll probably get a Steam Machine later this year myself just to play PC exclusives on, it should complement my Xbox One nicely.


I really don't know how it would be that much more.  They're designing it to be more powerful than Xbox One for the same price ( http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/alienware-steam-machine-to-cost-as-much-as-xbox-one-claims-that-a-bargain

So, in a couple of years, you'll probably be able to sell your original on ebay for $200 and only have to spend $300 ( + what you made for selling your original ) for the latest model which two years after you've purchased it will be twice as powerful as your original and vastly more powerful than Xbox One and PS4, so it will be able to play the latest third party games at drastically much better rate than One and 4 in 2016.