Steam Machines, Almost One Year Later

[SNESFAN]

...spent 2/3's of your budget ($200-300) and get like a gtx 770 ....

getting 2-3x the performance there I feel.

To be honest even if you get a GTX960 vs the 860M from the alienware alpha, it's still not 2 to 3 times the performance, actually more like slighly less than 2. http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-960-vs-GeForce-GTX-860M

You don't get super high performance for cheap. 

always with the misquote, anyways.....

the x70 series are significantly faster than the x60 series in general, not quite double but pretty close, that's why I said a 770 and not a 760, and the m series is worse than their non-m counterparts. The 7x0 - 8x0 series for example aren't as important as the x60 -  x70 

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-970-vs-GeForce-GTX-960

If you wanted to save yourself some money then yea, you might find a 760 for about $150, but I would go all out and put the $200-300 for the 770 because the difference is significant, in some areas 2-3x like I was saying

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-970-vs-GeForce-GTX-860M

EDIT:

correct link for a 770

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-860M-vs-GeForce-GTX-770

 

[ekianjo]

If you wanted to save yourself some money then yea, you might find a 760 for about $150, but I would go all out and put the $200-300 for the 770 because the difference is significant, in some areas 2-3x like I was saying   http://gpuboss.com/g...eForce-GTX-860M

You link is for the GTX970 I think. 

 

[SNESFAN]

they're around the same price, it's the x7x series that is important

 

[ekianjo]

they're around the same price, it's the x7x series that is important

The 970 is much more powerful than the 770 though. For Direct 11 performance it kills the 770 completely.

 

[SNESFAN]

I agree the dx 11 is a significant boost in what it's capable of doing, the 770 and all other x7x series cards have been fantastic from personal experience. A 770 will still get you amazing gameplay in new and old games alike.

Either way, here's a 970 for $299

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125706&cm_re=nvidia_gtx_970-_-14-125-706-_-Product

 

[ElPoco]

It's been a long time since I've taken a look at PC hardware, but the mid-high range PC I bought 8 years ago was able to run pretty much every game with high detail in 1680*1050 for a few years (at least 5, but since I only buy games when they drop below 5 euros, I tend to play games one or two years after their release, so that might skew my results). Lately, I had to lower the settings to enjoy some games, but I had the impression that nowadays it doesn't take a high-end machine to get most games working fine (unless you want to have multiple monitors/VR headset/steady 120 FPS). Am I mistaken?

 

[ekianjo]

Am I mistaken?

True, but Witcher 3 is pretty intensive on the GPU though. 

 

[SNESFAN]

there are few games that I can think of that were very CPU heavy anymore, planetside 2 (insanely large MMOFPS) was the last one I can think of that even if you had a killer GPU, and your CPU was like a i3 or something it caused your game to become unplayable (100+ player battles).

You can skimp and get an i3 or a i5 and still see good performance in tons and tons of other games, not even just older ones. That was the point I was angry about with the alienware, the upgrades bought you a beefer processor with the same lame GPU. Gaming computer!

 

[ekianjo]

it's slowly starting to change though. there are more and mroe games where the CPU makes a difference as well. In Witcher 3 for example in novigrad the frame rate becomes heavily dependent on the number of cores of the CPU. 

 

[thatgui]

does not fit exactly, but I put it here anyway:

Some (selfmade) Steam statistics:

https://medium.com/@galyonkin/some-things-you-should-know-about-steam-5eaffcf33218

 

[Nintendo]

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/18232-a-first-look-at-the-smach-zero-steamos-console/

Please give more love to the above thread.

 

[ekianjo]

does not fit exactly, but I put it here anyway:

Some (selfmade) Steam statistics:

https://medium.com/@galyonkin/some-things-you-should-know-about-steam-5eaffcf33218

Seen this article last week, it's very light on insights.