So, this isn't gonna be a hard benchmark video or anything, but I get annoyed by comments i see online. ERMAHGERD THE STEAM MACHINE IS A PAPERWEIGHT, YOU CAN'T RUN GAMES ON 8 GB VRAM! and crap like that. Uh...no, it's not a paperweight. It's perfectly capable for today's games. It's not ideal, but it's not unusable.
I mean, I've games on crap systems before. I used to game on integrated. I've pushed old laptops to their limits. Ive occasionally had to go back and test old GPUs as newer ones died and i had to wait for a replacement. I know what true "low end" gaming is like. I know what it's like trying to squeeze every frame out of a laughably inadequate system is like. No. THe steam machine is not a paperweight. It's not great value for the money, and I'll even admit, it's not futureproof. But acting like you CAN'T game on it is ridiculous.
I would know more than most what a steam machine is actually like because my daily driver is functionally equivalent to one. My main GPU is a 6650 XT. it's roughly as powerful, has 8 GB RAM. In practice, it's...give or take, as capable as a steam machine.
If anything, the rest of my machine far exceeds the steam machine. I got a i9 12900k with 32 GB DDR5 RAM. i dont keep XMP on as it's still under warranty and I quite frankly dont NEED the performance bump, but I also used to game on a 7700k with it, which is a bit weaker than the steam machine CPU. I can discuss my experiences from 2023 running it that way, but yeah, CPU bottlenecks are annoying.
So, first of all, let's establish the standard. The standard is basically...60+ FPS, 1080p. Beyond that, I don't care how I get there. If I can run stuff on ultra, I'll run on ultra, if I have to run stuff on low, I will on low. If I gotta turn FSR on, I'll turn it on, but I prefer not to.
Generally speaking, this is a low-medium card. I'll be blunt. It does not run most games at high or ultra settings these days. I mean, just to give you an idea how games run on it:
Doom the dark ages- low settings, FSR on, but with sharpening to make it look native. I tried running it at 60 native but I did get some hitching. Part of this seemed to be VRAM, but part of it also seemed to be the fact that the game just runs poorly on all RX 6000 series cards for some reason. Not the first time doom did that to me. I know Doom 2016 ran weirdly like this back on my GTX 760 back in the day. ID tech games seem to run like magic on new cards, very well optimized, but on older ones, performance is a bit borderline. Still, it runs, and it was playable. And it wasnt a bad experience. And given this is one of THE toughest to run games, yeah. It kinda sets the baseline.
Battlefield 6- This is my "main game", it looks amazing, and I spent a lot of time tweaking it to my liking. originally I ran like medium/medium-high, but I'd run into a VRAM limitation where I'd start dropping down to 30 FPS every so often, so after significant tweaking and turning future frame rendering on, it runs at like 100 on average generally, minimums in the 80s, which is how I like it. It's low-medium mostly, but with high textures, ironically. But yeah. Looks great, runs great, all native resolution.
Call of Duty Black Ops 7- While previous CODs typically ran at high or ultra, this one runs closer to medium. And I did have to use an upscaler to get the most out of it, otherwise it would hover around 60 FPS, when in reality, for a game like this I'd like it to run above like, 80 at all times, so I ended up settling on fidelity FX CAS. Gives it a native like look but with the performance of upscaling. Anyway, runs great.
Outer Worlds 2- Native resolution, medium low, runs around I'd say, 80ish FPS. Havent checked recently, but yeah. Could get more if you upscale. You can ALWAYS get more if you upscale. if you upscale enough you can get insane FPS on this card in most games. BUT...it looks horrible so native it is. And yeah, that limits me, again, to low-medium settings.
Heck, that's kind of the trend with everything relatively demanding. Wanna play, say, starfield? low medium. Callisto protocol, which came free with the card? Low medium.
Dont get me wrong, older games run great. Typically high-ultra at high FPS with no ray tracing, but yeah. Great experience. Even cyberpunk runs like 60+ on like high-ultra without ray tracing.
And yeah, that IS a necessary compromise, these older AMD architectures have poor RT abilities, so yeah, you cant really ray trace in most games while getting above 20-30 FPS. Of course, nvidia cards, or cards with 8 GB RAM in general don't really do great either. You kinda need to pay 2-3x as much for a card to be able to reasonably do that stuff.
Which kinda brings me back to a point I've always noticed on hardware forums. Most of the people who post on them these days are not scrappy middle class buyers with 3060/4060 tier hardware like your median gamer on steam hardware survey. They're these hardcore enthusiasts with 1440p or 4k setups, they want high FPS (120FPS+), and they often wanna play with ray tracing. And, of course, if you try to game on ultra at a high resolution with ray tracing, yeah, this card is gonna get CRUSHED. It's literally not designed for that. It never was. It was a 1080p oriented card released 4-5 years ago now (6650 XT is 4 years old, but the underlying architecture was released in 2021, with the 6600 XT originally being a $400 1080p card competing against the 3060 ti). It's always had inferior ray tracing, it doesnt have DLSS, and it didnt make sense at $400, which is why it quickly went down to $230-250ish just a year or two later. And at that price, it was great for those of us who saw the writing on the wall with our aging 1060/580 type GPUs. And honestly, it's been a decent card. it's not perfect. The 8 GB VRAM buffer is the worst aspect of it, but still, it runs stuff on low-medium perfectly fine, and if youre like me and you're fine just playing the game at a decent FPS and getting SOME decent experience out of it, it's fine.
I will say it's had some quirks though. While the problems of AMD drivers are exaggerated, problems exist. Like when I first got it, I decided to use Crysis and Crysis 3 as benchmarks. And Cry engine does NOT like AMD cards. I know this was true back in the day as well in some regards, but yeah, it did stutter a lot more than I hoped. Now, with crysis 1, I blame the CPU. I ran it on a 7700k, and was HEAVILY CPU bottlenecked. And that's kind of the issue with crysis as a benchmark in the modern day. The game wasnt designed with multithreading in mind so basically it runs on 2 threads and the rest of your CPU is idle, and the CPU is now the benchmark. And while I was getting like 120 FPS, it felt like a stuttery mess, because CPU benchmarks DO feel like that. heck, COD games like MWII, MWIII, and BF games like BF1, BF5, and BF2042 all ran with a horrible stutter on it simply because I had a CPU bottleneck early on. This alleviated itself after getting the 12900k, proving it was indeed the poor CPU that held me back, but yeah. Would a 3600x tier CPU do better? A little, but I do suspect that it might be too little in some instances too. You dont really wanna game with a CPU bottleneck, and for as much hate a weak GPU gets, I'd take a weaker GPU like a 6650 XT over a weaker CPU like a 3600x or 7700k these days. Because at least with the GPU, the games mostly feel smooth and can be scaled to the GPU in question, as long as it's not horribly weak or outdated. CPUs, you run games at that frame rate and if you dont like it, tough. It's one of the reason I got such a bonkers CPU with such a "weak" GPU. The other reason being microcenter deals. Seriously, $400 for the CPU, motherboard, AND RAM. A typical CPU upgrade runs $500ish when you do that, and that's for a mid range build. $400 is like a budget upgrade, $300 being ultra budget, and $600 being more premium. So....this isn't really out of sync money wise with the price I aimed for. But I digress.
Another issue I had with the AMD side of this card was the game delta force. It's basically a F2P Battlefield 2042 type title, it's pretty good, highly recommend it if you cant afford BF6 and want a BF experience. But yeah, it kinda ran weird on AMD cards for a while. It got better over time, but yeah, there was a certain stutter that seemed related to AMD drivers and yeah. It did make the frame pacing highly inconsistent.
Now, for a lot of steam machine buyers, they're likely not gonna play these kinds of titles. As people can tell, I like playing multiplayer FPS. But steam hardware aint good for that. You normally need a native windows environment due to anti cheat, and half of the above games won't even run on a steam machine running steam OS. Speaking of which, what kinds of games do steam machine buyers play? Well, a lot of people attracted to the deck seem to play indie games. They play relatively simple, low requirement 3D games like subnautica and stuff. Ya know, stuff that runs on 10 year old hardware just fine. So....if one of those super weird, trendy niche SFFPC buyers who dont care about playing the best, you just want a living room experience playing low spec games, yeah, this machine is overkill.
As for how futureproof it is. How long is a 6650 XT tier card going to last? Under normal circumstances, no RAMpocalypse, I'd be aiming for 2027 to replace it. I'd expect the 6000 series nvidia cards and their AMD equivalent to be out by then, and hopefully we'll get a decent bump over the 5060/9060 XT, with 12-16 GB VRAM becoming standard. Honestly, I prefer to upgrade when I can double my performance, and my next card is probably going to REQUIRE more VRAM. Seriously, when I think about what's gonna kill my current card's viability, it's not the raw power. It's the VRAM, and probably AMD's shoddy driver support for older architectures. Keep in mind I got a 6000 series card, whereas the steam deck is 7000 series. Despite the 6650 XT and 7600 being functionally about the same, AMD has been seemingly leaning toward sunsetting support on the 6000 series earlier than the 7000 series. Which is...well...an AMD issue. They're infamous for that. But still. The point is, when I look at future titles and this GPU starting to show its age, it's not the raw power that's gonna be the biggest issue. I mean, you can always scale down the resolution more and more, and I dont see a huge jump in power any time soon, even with "next gen consoles" around the corner (given the economic situation). It's the VRAM that ultimately becomes the factor of "yeah, either this GPU runs the game fine or it's a stuttery 15 FPS experience." It's ultimately driver support that determines "will this game even start?"
Now, given the fact that even before RAMpocalypse, you were looking at $350 just to get more than 8 GB VRAM, and even the base 9060 XT and the 5060 both having 8 GB, it's possible that 8 GB was gonna be the standard for running a game for another 2 years or so, but I think that might be extended further given the crisis and the fact that next gen consoles are likely going to have a several year phase in period. It would be a gut punch to anyone who bought a current gen 8 GB card to not get support. Still....I know how these things go historically and uh...remember the 960 2 GB? At this point, Im sitting here on the equivalent of the 660 ti in 2015, and people are buying 960s. Now, maybe if you could afford that fabled 970, you'd be good for a while (equivalent of buying say, a 5070 today), but below a certain price range? Yeah, you're boned. And right now, you need to pay around $450 to get a decent GPU that isnt 8 GB (intel notwithstanding).
So yeah. I jsut cant see them requiring 12 GB for games in the next, say, 2 years or so. Like HARD requiring it. It would screw over much of the existing PC market with no real affordable replacement. So with that said, I'd expect the steam deck to be relevant for 2 years at least.
Still....is $1050 a good deal for a machine that might lose its relevance 3-4 years from now? Hell no. A $1k PC should last, I'd say, about 4-6 years without too many issues. The Steam Machine is using what amounts to 3 year old mid range parts NOW (comparing to the 7600). Assuming a 5-6 year lifespan, that's 2-3 years left.
But at the same time, I'm just trying to prove that, yeah, you can game on it. Some people are acting like this is obsolete TODAY, and it's a paperweight TODAY, and that just ain't true. It will be eventually, but if we wait long enough, so will everything. I'd say the steam machine's hardware is dated, I wouldnt recommend buying it at the price it's at, but can you game on it right now? Yes. It'll probably be fine until we get next gen consoles and we see a rapid increase in system requirements that goes along with that. Which...we might see next year, but I honestly dont think they'll push the requirements too hard until people can actually afford the hardware to run the next gen games.
Again, I'd say it'll be fine for probably 2 years. After that it gets iffy.
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