Valve has officially revealed pricing and availability details for the Steam Machine, its new living room-focused gaming PC, with pre-orders opening ahead of a June 29 launch.
At this point in time specifically, a $1000 laptop (the comparable general purpose option) is going to be a mid-to-upper entry-level one. Because it’s supposed to be general purpose, it won’t have hardware chosen to maximize gaming potential. Likely all of these options would only allow a RAM or hard drive upgrade, as well. This puts them upon somewhat equal footing with the Steam Machine, except I would hazard a guess that the Steam Machine would still do better at gaming due to the hardware selection they had available at production time.
And if you mean building a $1000 gaming Linux box, good luck not going over that limit with current RAM, GPU, and SSD prices.
You said 1000$ could get you a laptop would be on equal footing with the Steam Machine, but a hand-built 1000$ desktop wouldn’t? What world do you live in where laptops are cheaper than desktops?
For me, form factor, tv compatibility, good remote play hardware, wake from sleep with controller. These are all technically possible with PCs, but a real fucking nuisance. Plus I’m curious.
This is true, but at that point, why not buy a computer, that’s more customizable and upgradeable?
At this point in time specifically, a $1000 laptop (the comparable general purpose option) is going to be a mid-to-upper entry-level one. Because it’s supposed to be general purpose, it won’t have hardware chosen to maximize gaming potential. Likely all of these options would only allow a RAM or hard drive upgrade, as well. This puts them upon somewhat equal footing with the Steam Machine, except I would hazard a guess that the Steam Machine would still do better at gaming due to the hardware selection they had available at production time.
And if you mean building a $1000 gaming Linux box, good luck not going over that limit with current RAM, GPU, and SSD prices.
You said 1000$ could get you a laptop would be on equal footing with the Steam Machine, but a hand-built 1000$ desktop wouldn’t? What world do you live in where laptops are cheaper than desktops?
For me, form factor, tv compatibility, good remote play hardware, wake from sleep with controller. These are all technically possible with PCs, but a real fucking nuisance. Plus I’m curious.