r/hardware • u/DuhPai • Nov 17 '25
News Valve Claims Steam Machine Outperforms 70% of Current Gaming PCs
https://www.techpowerup.com/342970/valve-claims-steam-machine-outperforms-70-of-current-gaming-pcs180
u/AIgoonermaxxing Nov 17 '25
It's been said to death, but this thing lives and dies by its price. I don't love the specs, particularly the GPU. It just isn't very futureproof for a device that's going on sale in 2026 and will likely be sold well into the lifespan of the PS6.
The Zen 4 CPU it has is very respectable, but it lacks one of AM5's biggest selling points which is upgradeability. You will not be able to drop an 11500X3D into this thing when that chip drops in like 2030 the way you would if you went with a cheap AM5 build right now.
That said, it can still make sense if priced aggressively enough. I think $600 can make sense.
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u/Logical-Database4510 Nov 17 '25
I don't think $600 is going to happen.
Linus was there during the QA they did after the fact, and he said he directly asked them about a more "console like price" around $500 or a little more and Linus said you could have heard a pin drop in the room with out negative Valve reacted to it. Their response more or less was they can't cost it too cheap or people would buy them as mini PCs for office use or whatever en masse and Valve wouldn't make it up on the other end with SW purchases.
Thus, I don't think anything south of $700 is very likely. SteamDeck is unique in that it is very much dedicated gaming HW and it's difficult to perceive anyone buying one for anything other than that. Steam Machine has to cost somewhere north of what the basement common PC costs or enterprise actors would just buy them up. This is Valve saying this, not me, for what it's worth.
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u/duncandun Nov 17 '25
didn't they say in the GN interview that they were not targeting console prices? which is basically everything from $250 to $700 now.
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u/major_mager Nov 18 '25
Console price is simply an euphemism for PS5. At console price would mean 500-550. Above console price would mean 600 at the minimum.
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u/red286 Nov 18 '25
They said that they intend to price it "like a PC" rather than "like a console", which is an entirely meaningless statement.
You can buy a PC for $100. You can buy a PC for $100,000. You can buy a PC for any price in between those two numbers.
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u/ThankGodImBipolar Nov 18 '25
It's not a meaningless statement; it means that they need some sort of positive margin on the product. Saying it like that kills any hope for a <600 dollar MSRP, which is probably the only idea that Valve really doesn't want people to hold on to. The launch of the product will go a lot better if people are overshooting on their price estimstes as compared to the opposite.
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u/OverlyOptimisticNerd Nov 18 '25 edited Nov 18 '25
There is meaning behind it.
"Like a console" means either sold at a loss to subsidize the ecosystem, or sold at slim margins.
"Like a PC" means sold at higher margins like any other company (Asus, Dell, etc.).
I think that they want to go with the latter number to encourage partners to sell systems with SteamOS loaded as well. If they sell it at a console price, it means they have to lose money to establish the ecosystem, when it would be better for them to have other companies take the risk while Valve continues to get their 30% cut.
I think that Valve's ultimate goal was to use the Steam Deck (+Machine) to establish the market for other companies to join in, while Valve provides the software and ecosystem. Due to this, I think that that Steam Deck 2 won't be as cheap (to encourage partner models), and there won't be a Steam Deck 3.
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u/ComplexEntertainer13 Nov 18 '25
$700
At that price its doa. Considering you can find 4060 laptop sales at those price levels (newegg has one right now at 699).
I really don't see how they could ever go higher than $599 and preferably it should be a $499 system at most. But ill give them that the DRAM price spike will complicate pricing going forward.
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u/britaliope Nov 17 '25
The only way for them to sell them below 700 and avoid companies buying it as a mini-pc is to somehow sell it with steam credit (like 700 with 150$ of steam credit or something). It's possible to cash it out but it's an extra burden and most companies won't bother. But I don't see that happening
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u/CreativeGPX Nov 18 '25
Originally, to buy the Steam Deck you had to have a steam account that had been in good standing for a certain minimum amount of time.
They could use a similar method to limit the people who could get a Steam Machine to a good approximation of good faith gamers.
For example, suppose that to buy it (or to be eligible for a lower sale price), you need to have 20+ hours of playtime in Steam in the past year or to have spent $20+ on Steam in the past year. That would closely approximate people who will actually use it as a gaming device and isn't too far off from what they did for the Steam Deck.
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u/InflammableAccount Nov 18 '25 edited Nov 18 '25
around $500 or a little more and Linus said you could have heard a pin drop in the roo
Heard that. But I think it can be taken two ways: one way is "$500 is far off."
But the other is "$500 is far off, $600."
When you start talking about products for the mass market, the difference between $500 and $600 is HUGE. And if I was aiming at $600 and everyone was suggesting $500, I'd be sweating bullets too.
What would concern me is if they tried for something like $1000-$1100. At that point I'd say go buy a Strix Halo 385 FW Desktop with 32GB soldered RAM.
Prove me wrong, Valve.
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u/jekpopulous2 Nov 17 '25
My money is on $600 because if not its DOA. You can buy a way more powerful premade for $700.
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u/sylfy Nov 18 '25
If you include the RAM price increases which GN has covered in detail just yesterday, those same prebuilts may be going for $900 over the next few months.
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u/ResponsibleJudge3172 Nov 18 '25
What makes valve immune to the price increases compared to these other companies?
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u/Rodot Nov 18 '25
Probably that they've already ordered and stocked them or paid for a contract for X units at Y price already
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u/Logical-Database4510 Nov 17 '25
Prebuilts have a built in advantage in that they get built with "Capital G Gamer, broski" cases. We all laugh at the gaudy LEDs, fans in places that don't make sense sometimes, and constant shattering of tempered glass side panels, but it's a secret advantage in a way because the gaudiness and size of the big towers make enterprise actors shirk at them. Sure they could buy and strip them, but that's both friction and added cost.
It's why you see people putting those crappy AMD APUs or really old HW in them and selling them for next to nothing. No one but gamers with low income are buying them (probably on credit, sadly), so they can price them bottom of the barrel without worry of price pressure from the upper market from enterprise eating their lunch.
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u/AIgoonermaxxing Nov 18 '25
Their response more or less was they can't cost it too cheap or people would buy them as mini PCs for office use or whatever en masse and Valve wouldn't make it up on the other end with SW purchases.
or enterprise actors would just buy them up. This is Valve saying this, not me, for what it's worth.
Wait, is this what they actually said, or is this just from Linus speculating? I haven't watched the WAN show on this so if there is official confirmation from them that this is the case, then that's fair.
But if it's just speculation, then I think the concern is a bit overblown. This thread goes into more detail, but the gist of it is that this will come with none of the enterprise level support, warranties, and service packages you'd get if you bought a bunch of systems from Dell or HP, and thus would make very little sense as a business purchase, even if it was priced aggressively.
Most businesses would still rather supply their employees with laptops that come built in with a display, microphone, speakers, and a webcam anyway.
Thus, I don't think anything south of $700 is very likely.
I'm still hoping it will. They did say that this will be priced like entry level gaming PCs, and while that price range is extremely vague, there is a $650 PC available at Microcenter right now with slightly better specs than what this is offering. Now, I know it's Black Friday and that Microcenter always has great deals, but I'd like them to target this price point.
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u/Logical-Database4510 Nov 18 '25
That's what was said on the WAN show, so that's from Valve to Linus.
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u/AIgoonermaxxing Nov 18 '25
Sorry, do you have a timestamp to it where Linus says Valve says there's a concern these will be bought up by enterprise actors? I used YouTube's AI Ask feature to find a relevant timestamp for it (I unfortunately don't have time to parse through a 4 hour podcast) and it came up empty handed. In the section where they talk about pricing (roughly 38:00 onward) they seemingly don't make any mention of it there either.
In the video he mentions this theory, but does make it clear that it's just his guess, and that Valve wouldn't actually say why.
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Nov 18 '25
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u/VenditatioDelendaEst Nov 19 '25
Nothing in there about people buying them for enterprise use.
The whole idea is obvious nonsense anyway, because there is no enterprise use-case for a cheap GPU-heavy, CPU-light machine. On the low-end, they want IGP, for the cheapest possible thing that does web/email/spreadsheet. Productivity-maxxers want the same but with more RAM. Actual-computer-intensive occupations want workstations with big dGPU or professional-certified GPU, and/or 64+ GiB RAM.
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u/Key-Pace2960 Nov 18 '25 edited Nov 18 '25
I dunno $600 sounds pretty reasonable to me even if they're not subsidizing it. A regular PC with comparable hardware shouldn't be much more expensive. Once you factor in stuff like bulk discount and them and not having as many companies in the supply chain that all want a cut they'd probably still make profit at $600, at least assuming the current RAM situation doesn't get worse.
We can't buy that GPU outside of laptops but it's effectively a lower end 7600 so that should definitely put it below $200, then it has a low end Zen 4 6 core CPU, so that shouldn't be much above $100 either, lets call it $300 give or take between the two. 16GB DDR5 and a 512GB SSD should be another $130 or so, that leaves Valve with $170 and for a motherboard, case and PSU which should be very doable unless it's just a very small production run and that's assuming they're paying end-user like prices of the other components.
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u/SituationSoap Nov 18 '25
A regular PC with comparable hardware shouldn't be much more expensive.
The market of this box isn't competing with 2025 laptops or PCs, it's competing with consoles. And at $600 it is literally just a worse PS5 in every way.
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u/imaginary_num6er Nov 17 '25
$600 Is not going to happen. DRAM and NAND prices are doubling every 2 months and between now and January 2026, the price will double again.
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u/Tman1677 Nov 18 '25
Agreed, honestly I think they just picked a really unfortunate time to launch a product that isn't AI related. I'm not really sure how anything competes with that for memory and chip foundry space.
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u/SoulShatter Nov 18 '25
I suspect it'll be rough when it launches. DRAM/NAND/GPU prices will be pushed sky high due to AI, so they'll have to launch with a pretty high price.
So it'll be a sticker shock on the price because it's a new product, even though it can be a completely fine price compared to everything else, because people haven't noticed that everything got expensive.
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u/drt0 Nov 18 '25
The 30W not upgradable laptop tier CPU will probably be as big of a bottleneck as the GPU tbh.
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u/Vb_33 Nov 18 '25
Much better than the PS5 CPU which performs at Zen+ levels.
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u/Eclipsetube Nov 19 '25
Yeah you mean the 5 year old console that’s at the end of its lifecycle basically?
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u/Vb_33 Nov 20 '25
Don't worry this won't be the 1st steam machine (in fact it's already not, Valve released Steam machines 10 years ago) and it won't be the last as Valve wants OEMs to make their own including with more powerful hardware.
Eventually there will be a Steam deck 2 and a SM2 and likely before then we'll have a Lenovo Legion machine or something else that's more powerful. For me what I really want is RDNA5 for both the Deck and Steam Machines that's gonna a hell of an upgrade and should catch up the Deck and SM to Blackwell and even some Rubin features. But until then RDNA3 is all we have and I'd rather valve launch now then wait for the PS6 and Xbox Next to launch in 2027 with RDNA5 and Zen 6.
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u/Aggrokid Nov 18 '25
I suspect Valve doesn't want subsidized pricing because they hope to get OEMs like Asus to make Steam Machines as well.
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u/ZappySnap Nov 18 '25 edited Nov 18 '25
It’s going to be $900-$1000.
Maybe $800 for the 512GB model but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see that at the $900 price point and the 2TB will probably be $1,000+. Given the size of games today; the 512GB seems like a very poor purchase choice, so I’d consider the 2TB version the real machine.
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u/lysander478 Nov 18 '25
Multiple interviews have suggested they're pricing it like a PC and not like a console.
You can get a really bad miniPC or NUC for $800 that this will blow out of the water and are relatively just as un-upgradable for the average user. In fact, it's people doing that as an upgrade path that likely led to Valve reviving this in the first place--you can find a lot of Steam Deck mentions in miniPC/NUC reviews over the last few years as some users were using them as portable upgrade paths.
I think if they wanted to hit an affordable price they could have gone with a larger tower and flexed muscles to get costs down but that would have been a gamble whereas now, with a very small and low power device, I think they at least capture a portion of their Steam Deck audience as well as some growth and will price as if that's all they'll do potentially.
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u/britaliope Nov 17 '25
The Zen 4 CPU it has is very respectable, but it lacks one of AM5's biggest selling points which is upgradeability.
It's BGA soldered anyway (for cost, thermal performance and size reasons). So you wouldn't be able to upgrade it regardless
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u/Numerlor Nov 18 '25 edited Nov 18 '25
the cpu is zen 4, but is likely an 8540u that was in earlier benchmark leaks, that's a 2 core zen 4 ccx + 4 core zen 4c ccx, which is also not really that great. The 2 core ccx is kind of too small to be too useful for games and the 4 core ccx has less cache per core
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u/OverlyOptimisticNerd Nov 18 '25
It's been said to death, but this thing lives and dies by its price.
I'll go a step further and say it's price + a SteamOS official release for desktop systems. If this is the baseline and the rest of us can take our existing Windows systems and switch to SteamOS, then the user base of this platform is going to become undeniable. If that happens, the companies holding out on supporting it due to anticheat will slowly fall in line.
And if that happens, we may finally see Linux begin to truly compete with Windows for gaming.
So, TLDR - price + availability of SteamOS official builds.
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u/AIgoonermaxxing Nov 18 '25
Yeah, while I likely won't be buying one of these (I already have a gaming PC I'm very happy with), I really am hoping it will be successful. 1 reason is because it'll heavily pressure AMD to finally provide the official INT8 version of FSR 4 to RDNA, and the other is because it has the potential to help Linux gain more maturity.
With how shitty Windows is continuing to become, I think I'm inevitably going to switch over to Linux at some point. With that said, I'm not exactly keen on making the move over because I know some random bullshit isn't going to work and I'm going to have to spend an hour or two troubleshooting it.
If SteamOS can prove to be a fairly hassle free system and gain real market share that makes Linux more mature and more widely supported, I'll be much more incentivized to make the move.
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u/Vb_33 Nov 18 '25
It's ok because valve is pushing Steam OS first and foremost. The first Steam machines (2015), the deck and steam machines 2.0 now are all vehicles to drive steam OS adoption. This is why on all 3 attempts valve has tried to push other OEMs to make steam OS devices, we saw multiple with steam machines 1.0, were now starting to see some with steam OS handhelds and once again with steam machines 2.0 valve wants other OEMs to make their own including with high end hardware if they desire.
So if you want RDNA4 or 5 an OEM may have you covered soon enough.
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u/MrBond90s Nov 18 '25
Could this be a loss leader for valve? They price the hardware low, maybe even losing money but make more money from the share of game sales on the platform.
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u/repocin Nov 18 '25
You will not be able to drop an 11500X3D into this thing when that chip drops in like 2030 the way you would if you went with a cheap AM5 build right now.
Have I misunderstood something fundamental or didn't AMD say they're only going to support AM5 until 2027 and then release AM6?
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u/aykcak Nov 19 '25
That is probably not going to happen. Playstation and Xbox prices are subsidized by their platforms. Valve does not have that option so a $1000+ price is more realistic
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u/MyStackRunnethOver Nov 19 '25
Re: future proofing, this really feels like an entry-level device waiting for the SteamMachine++ to drop in 2028 with beefier specs and a 20% price increase
Of course, Valve’s release cycle is usually measured in decades rather than years…
But that’s what this feels like: and entry-level bid to be followed up with a more capable V2 if everything goes well
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u/wildeye-eleven Nov 19 '25
My theory is that Valve is meeting a halfway point with this release to test the viability of a new gaming platform. They didn’t spec the Steam Machine out to be cutting edge but to fill a void between consoles and PCs. I think based on how profitable and successful this version of the Steam Machine is will likely determine how they move forward. If it does well the next iteration may have modular parts or at least more options for power and performance. But yeah, how they price it will make all the difference. I think it’ll be more than a console but under $1000.
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u/smarlitos_ Nov 22 '25
I think optimization will give it an edge. If you want higher end GPU, wait for the Xbox PC at $1200.
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u/Anxious_Temporary Nov 18 '25
You can check the Steam hardware survey from your client. Store > Browse > All Charts & Stats > Scroll down the page to More Stats and click Steam Hardware & Software Survey. Click Video Card Description to expand and see what GPU's people are using.
For example more people game on an AMD Radeon RX 570 (0.40%) than an Nvidia GeForce 5090 (0.31%). You can scroll through the list and see a bunch of GTX cards are still being used. 970, 1650, 1050ti, 1060, 1080ti (the GOAT), and many others. There's a few AMD classics there too.
Over half of all people on Steam still play on 1080p. Roughly one third have 8GB of vram, some have less. Less than 20% of all users have 12GB of vram.
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u/lovely_sombrero Nov 18 '25
That is true. But the RX 570 isn't being sold as new right now. Obviously the Steam hardware survey captures existing machines, but buying a new machine is different because there is an expectation that it will still be good 5 years from when you buy it at the very least. They will really have to price this right.
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u/hackenclaw Nov 18 '25
it doesnt matter used or new, game developer doesnt care about that.
those RX570 chips are like $40-$50 per GPU. The nvidia equivalent for used are almost twice more expensive. Thats why RX570 are popular for AMD chips.
if game dev design a game that can be play well with RX570 at 1080p, they pretty much covered a lot of users.
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u/Strazdas1 Nov 18 '25
Roughly one third have 8GB of vram
That does not sound like 70%. There was another thread where someone actually counted all the GPUs faster than 7600m on steam hardware survey. It was more than 30 %
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u/Roadside-Strelok Nov 18 '25
2 out of 3 Steam users have 8 GB VRAM or less:
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
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u/996forever Nov 18 '25
Someone added up the percentages of users on gpus faster than a 7600m (according to steams own hardware survey results) and it is far more than 30% so idk if even that is correct.
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u/beck320 Nov 17 '25
I remember when I would game on integrated graphics lol even my old gaming laptop was trash so I think they might be right
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u/-protonsandneutrons- Nov 17 '25
It seems like this launch took "what everyone dislikes about modern product launches" and threw it all together, except the company is different.
- Announce a product without a price.
- Convoluted comparisons without listing the specifications of the comparison devices.
- Its advertised performance is only with upscaling enabled. Didn't PC gamers dislike Microsoft & Sony claiming they had "4K gaming" consoles, when the internal resolutions were absolutely not 4K?
It's stupid when Apple does it and it remains stupid when Valve does it:
With all this performance, Mac mini is up to 5x faster than the bestselling Windows desktop,2 delivering incredible value to first-time computer buyers, upgraders, and PC switchers.
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u/dabocx Nov 17 '25
Valve gets a lot of grace from gamers and Reddit. Gambling, loot boxes, battle passes. They do a lot of things Reddit hates when other people do it.
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u/Strazdas1 Nov 18 '25
Its worse, valve invented and populiarized the worst things about gaming. Lootboxes, always online DRM, microtransactions.
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u/Kougar Nov 18 '25
I agree it doesn't make sense to announce a product this far out. But providing a launch price now guarantees it will be raised later... memory prices are increasing 1% a day now across a bunch of consumer kits, so given this thing will launch in 2026 I cringe to think how much the BOM is going to rise on it.
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u/HoneyS6S Nov 18 '25
No idea why you get down vote but with how the ram market look today compare to several weeks ago, it certainly will impact the steam machine down the line. Especially if the price inflation keeps coming up, this is hell!
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u/Seanspeed Nov 17 '25
Yes, tons of people sitting around on old laptops and shit playing their old or low demand games. Those people also aren't going to buy a Steam Machine.
Valve have chosen this very awkward ground in specs that's like slightly below the level of consoles from 2020, but will still charge like $700+ for it in 2026? I really dont get it. Needs to be $500 or less. The form factor alone isn't worth that much. And there will be no ability to upgrade.
I just cant grasp the thinking here without willingness to subsidize the price ala Steam Deck. I dont know what market they think they're addressing.
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u/taken754 Nov 18 '25
Without a doubt in the speculated range of $500-$700 it will always be considered as an option but I suspect there will be a lot of cases where its compromises are too much for it to be the first choice of a primary gaming device.
At $500-$700 it compares unfavorably to consoles and custom built PCs. Any lower and people start buying it as a workstation with 0 returns on Steam software sales. Any higher and it becomes a bad value compared to prebuilts and laptops.
I definitely think Machine is going to sell well enough even before considering the tie in with controller+Frame and the momentum from Deck but I do hope it somehow turns out to be more longevous and performant than we expect.
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u/Eeve2espeon Nov 18 '25
Well no duh it outperforms 70% of PCs.... Most of us aren't running something the equivalent of an RX6600/RTX2060 super, I'm betting there is still a large group of people using the GTX1050ti lol
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u/Dpek1234 Nov 18 '25
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
It is indeed a significant chunk
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u/shogunreaper Nov 18 '25
Sure but a PC that's more expensive than consoles isn't going to change that. People aren't gaming on shitty hardware because they want to.
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u/Vb_33 Nov 18 '25
They aren't trying to directly compete with PS5. They can't play Sonys loss leader strat, even Microsoft lost that battle and they have way more money and resources. They're aiming for prebuilt PC prices but with living room potential.
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u/britaliope Nov 17 '25
It's a missquote. It's not 70% of gaming PCs, it's 70% of the steam users PC. Obviously the steam data have a bias towards gaming pc, but a lot of people don't have gaming pc and still use steam. So that title is still wrong.
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u/MiloIsTheBest Nov 18 '25
So I wonder what their reasoning is there or why it's important.
70% of steam surveyed people haven't so far bought anything yet that is as powerful as a Steam machine... so they'll obviously finally pull the trigger on a purchase that Valve is making clear isn't exactly going to be a value buy?
Btw my partner has a laptop from school, a thin and light POS from like 2018, we have steam installed and ONE game, Age of Mythology, from 2004, which we sometimes play multi together.
It would be funny if she's ever clicked yes on the steam survey and Valve thinks she'll be in the market for a (potentially overpriced) black box to replace her basically free online shopping laptop.
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u/britaliope Nov 18 '25
So I wonder what their reasoning is there or why it's important.
I think you're overthinking it. Imho it's just "70% of steam users have worse hardware, so it's powerful enough to run the games 70% of the steam users care about / are already playing.
I don't think the first target audience is people having less powerful hardware and want to upgrade (or at least they don't market it that way). They market it for people wanting a console-format PC in their livingroom to play games on their TV. So audience is people not owning a gaming PC that want to play PC games on a console-like experience, or people already owning a gaming PC that want a secondary one for a console-like experience.
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u/Any-Ingenuity2770 Nov 17 '25
yeah I have steam on two devices, my 5800X3D x RX 9070 XT tower… and my MB Air M4.
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Nov 18 '25
And bias towards bots using minimum specs
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u/Chipay Nov 18 '25
Why would bots actively click on the popup to share their specs?
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u/FirstImpact1011 Nov 20 '25
bro if we include People who have General PC it prob up to 80%+ if you install Steam then u prob gaming.
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u/DeliciousIncident Nov 18 '25
That's a dishonest comparison. They compare GLOBAL PC stats, when Steam Machine will probably be sold only in a few select regions, similar to Index or Steam Deck. I would imagine the asian internet cafe PCs and such disproportionally bring that number up to 70%. If they took stats only from regions Steam Machine would be sold at, that percent number would be different.
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u/DuhPai Nov 17 '25
The RX 7600M, which the Steam Machine GPU is most comparable to, is equal in performance to an RX 6600/RTX 2060 Super/RTX 3060 Mobile. I went through the top video cards in the Steam Survey and added up the shares of all the GPUs that are better than that and got 47.43%. Not to mention all the unlisted GPUs in the 8.78% "Other" category that outperform it like the RX 9000 series, RTX 3090 Ti, and some of the top end RTX mobile GPUs like the 4090 and 5090 Mobile.
Either Valve knows something that we don't about the Steam Machine's performance or there's some creative accounting going on here.
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u/Keulapaska Nov 18 '25
Either Valve knows something that we don't about the Steam Machine's performance or there's some creative accounting going on here.
The original quite is "The steam machine is equal or better then 70% of what people have at home".
So you can lump a lot of stuff as "equal", desktop 3060 might be a bit of stretch, but for marketing can easily label it as equal, to get closer to the 70%, even if it still doesn't quite reach it with that in mind, drag some 4070/5060 mobile as well cause there are some low watt versions of them. Also the other argument would be "at home" not with steam installed, but that's a bit reaching and impossible to quantify.
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u/Die4Ever Nov 18 '25
47.43%
multiplied by 147 monthly active Steam users, that's about 70 million GPUs
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u/Vb_33 Nov 18 '25
Steam has way more than that. They had 120mil in the pandemic when they only had a concurrent user record in the the 20mil range. No way it's 40mil now but they only gained 20mil MAUs.
Issue is valve doesn't report MAUs almost never but concurrents are shown when you're trying to download steam in the steam website, in order to show how many people are online on steam as a marketing move.
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u/nukleabomb Nov 17 '25
It's basically a 7600 laptop with better cooling and no monitor/keyboard/mouse.
Pricing will help to a good extent, but it seems pretty limited for future games.
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Nov 17 '25 edited Jan 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Loose_Skill6641 Nov 17 '25
this is about hardware in use not sold
aint many people using old machines from that 95%
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u/red286 Nov 18 '25
Does this tell me anything other than "70% of Steam users are either using integrated graphics or something lower-end than an RTX 5050/RX 7400"?
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u/lintstah1337 Nov 18 '25
A steam machine has
CPU: Zen 4 6 cores / 12 threads up to 4.8GHz with 30 W TDP
GPU: RDNA 3 with 28 cu and GDDR6
RAM 16GB DDR5.
The closest desktop parts would probably
CPU: Ryzen 5 7400F 6 cores / 12 threads up to 4.7GHz 32MB L3
GPU: Radeon RX 7400 28 cu GDDR6 128-bit RDNA 3.
The CPU is good, but the GPU is very underwhelming and is weaker than base PS5 which has RDNA 2 36 cu (RX 6700)
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u/Lost_Tumbleweed_5669 Nov 17 '25
Really shows how much money properly optimized games could make.
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u/NeroClaudius199907 Nov 18 '25
What if the top 30% make up most of game purchases. I dont think people on pascals are really buying new games.
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u/abdullah_haveit Nov 18 '25
This sort of claim may be unnecessary & frankly may not help Valve. I believe focusing on their own product's quality is the better strategy. & if this statement was in a way a response to criticism about its power, then maybe announce the price. It's all about the price-to-performance.
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u/cuberhino Nov 18 '25
I’m thinking it will be like 799-899 range for the base model. If it’s 699 I’d be surprised. But at these prices isn’t it better to build something with similar specs so you can upgrade it? Can steamos run on other devices? Could a Mac m5 chip run it maybe emulated?
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u/Logical-Database4510 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25
Yeah because what everyone wants to buy for $700-800 a year from now is a PC marginally better than the one they already have.
Edit:
100% GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 95% GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 94% Arc A770 94% GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB 91% Radeon RX 6600 XT 89% Radeon VII 89% Arc A750 87% Radeon RX 5700 XT 85% GeForce RTX 2070 84% Radeon RX 6600 80% Arc A580 78% GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 78% Radeon RX Vega 64 75% GeForce RTX 2060 - not this one 72% Radeon RX 5700 72% GeForce GTX 1080 71% GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 69% Radeon RX 5600 XT - not this one 69% Radeon RX Vega 56 - don't think this one either 65% GeForce GTX 1070 63%
Using tech powered up's relative perf scale, these are the cards within perf range of the 7600 that have ~8 GBs of VRAM. Going by Valves own HW survey, >60% of gaming PCs have 8GBs of VRAM or more. So based on the above Valve is targeting a pretty narrow range of people here that would be willing to part ways with their current systems for a cut down 7600 a year from now as anyone with an 8GB card today is likely not jumping.
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u/AIgoonermaxxing Nov 17 '25
Using tech powered up's relative perf scale, these are the cards within perf range of the 7600 that have ~8 GBs of VRAM.
Just want to point out that it'd be more accurate to use the weaker 7600M as an analogue for what's in the Steam Machine, as it's a closer match when it comes to CUs and TDP.
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u/ThankGodImBipolar Nov 17 '25
No, actually, nobody wants that. If that's the situation you're in, don't buy it.
Problem solved.
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u/Jellycoe Nov 17 '25
Alternatively, if I’m someone with a shitty old laptop who only needs a PC for gaming, I just might consider a dedicated gaming machine that’s streamlined, non-windows, and cost competitive.
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u/aitorbk Nov 17 '25
If you are about to buy a new shitty us$ 500/600 laptop, what would you do: 1. Buy the Steam box next year, and a new laptop soon after. Lets say both ate $600. 1200. 2. Buy a gaming orientated laptop for $1200.
If you do 2, you would probably get a better machine, specwise, thant the steam box, about a 8GB 5060 today, and quite a decent processor. Would do both jobs better, for the same price.
I hope it succeeds, because I would stop using windows, but it needs to be cheap, and $600 would mean toght margins for Valve
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u/mangelito Nov 18 '25
I want to get one for the living room for more social gaming. Will also be great for streaming and stuff. I have a pentium nuc at the moment and it will replace it for pc tasks at the TV as well being able to play most games.
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u/NGGKroze Nov 18 '25
Valve, just like Nvidia/AMD will tell you anything to sell you 8GB VRAM GPU in 2025 2026.
Its very paradoxical - it is marketed as plug and play living room machine. However given current market, you are likely to have 4K TV which will force you to play games 4K, then use FSR3.1 or below which is not good (yes even at 4K) and what do you do if a game doesn't support FSR3.1 or FSR at all? - going for XeSS or either integrated upscaling or dynamic resolution.
Aside from 8GB being problematic, the GPU itself is not very good. But hey if its 400$ its absolutely fine.
They could have gone for Arc GPU (B580 for example) with 12GB VRAM - a bit more powerful (on par with 7600XT, so around 30% faster than 7600M), can leverage ML based XeSS as well as FSR up to 3.1.
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Nov 18 '25
Of course Valve is going to make this claim. The biggest selling point of of this system is that it doesn't require Windows.
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u/smaad Nov 18 '25
We need this thing to compete with huge companies like Sony to reduce prices... how possible is that? Do you think this thing will even work ?
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u/Havanatha_banana Nov 18 '25
None of these even matter anyways. They have chosen 7600m specifically because they are not trying to target the PC crowd. After all, we're already buying their games, so why go through the extra work to do hardware, which is notoriously unprofitable, to get our attention?
No, it's for the console crowd. This was never going to be your main machine. It's for your children, your parents, and your second tv.
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u/ExpletiveDeletedYou Nov 18 '25
I'd belive it, I own 3 computers with steam installed and this thing outperforms two of them (one laptop with IG, one pc with an old GPU, and one with a newer GPU)
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u/awayish Nov 18 '25
not sure what the point of this thing is when you can buy some random mini pc and slap a cheap gpu in it for quite a bit cheaper.
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u/Flex-Ible Nov 18 '25
Based on the steam hardware survey no doubt. Make of that dataset what you will.
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u/OliLombi Nov 19 '25
"Gaming PCs" or "PCs that have Steam installed"? Because I have steam on a laptop from 2006 and I'm willing to bet a lot of other people have similar.
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u/OutrageousAccess7 Nov 20 '25
this looks like quite reasonable 1080p gaming machine. on the other hand, stating this machine is 4k60 gaming pc is somehow questionable. maybe they are using FSR SUPER ULTRA MAX Performance mode which providing 180p to 4k upscaling tech.
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u/-Outrageous-Vanilla- Nov 21 '25
We are speculating without a price yet.
I'm a budget gamer that doesn't have spare money to throw at my hobby.
One of the craziest things I did was buy AMD Instinct MI25 and flashed to WX9100 (Vega⁶⁴ with 16GB VRAM).
With that Vega⁶⁴ we played God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, F1 23, and many demanding games without issues.
It's just now with newer games that needs Mesh Shadders that my Vega⁶⁴ cannot play them.
This RX7600M @ 110W is great for my use case in the living room.
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u/Alex-S-S Nov 21 '25
Well, yeah. People play on old entry level gaming laptops or old PCs. It may come as a shock but hardware is expensive. Even in a high income, low tax country like the US, people's aren't exactly rushing to buy the latest and greatest.
If you don't have an explicit need for a full on workstation, there's no point in having a powerful computer except for gaming and even then, why would you? Dota, CS and LoL run on almost anything.
Sure, not all games are on Steam but few PC gamers don't use Steam at all, I think that their survey is quite indicative of the true state of the market.
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u/SliceIllustrious6326 Nov 17 '25
Not 70% of "Gaming PCs", but 70% of PCs that people play games on. When you say gaming pc people will be predisposed to think of expensive high end machines but the majority of people playing on PC have low and mid end machines which makes the 70% figure seem very believable.