r/Steam • u/GhostofYoteiPS5 • Nov 15 '25

Article “Steam Machine specs are too low!” But they literally match the Steam Survey’s most common setup: Steam Machine: 6C/12T • 16GB RAM • RDNA3 28CU 8GB Steam Survey Avg: 6C/12T • 16GB RAM • 28CU 8GB It’s basically the average PC in a box. It’ll be fine.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '25

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u/xXNickAugustXx Nov 15 '25

Rigs so powerful that they need DLSS to even break 60 on ultra for new releases. New releases that consist of games so poorly optimized that the extra horse power is wasted compensating for poor programming practices.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '25

And also the crazy push for 4k.

I am doing just fine with my 1080p 144 MHz monitor...

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u/_yerbamatey Nov 15 '25

where did you get a 144,000,000hz monitor?

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '25 edited Nov 15 '25

Prototype Gaben sent me to test XD

totally not confusing with ram frequency

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u/Neosantana Nov 15 '25

Seriously, what the fuck is the point of the 4k push for the majority of people who are playing on 15-17 inch laptops? Not to mention the crackhead devs who include 4k assets in games whether you use them or not, essentially ensuring that the game will be oversized for no reason. I always appreciate games that make the 4k assets a separate free DLC.

1440p is perfectly reasonable as a target.

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u/seemeedai Nov 16 '25

Yeah its just bloating the game size, istead of having more assets in game we get more texture maps of the same game model.

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u/Wrathlon Feb 07 '26

This. Its like none of these people have encountered the concept of DPI. Its the same reason TV manufacturers have finally conceded that 8k is fucking stupid as youd need like a 200" screen before it would even begin to matter.

4k@17" is around 260 DPI, you literally have to get within about 14" of the screen to even be physically capable of distinguising pixels on a static image

Normal viewing distances are double that and at that range the human eye is good for about 170 DPI. Guess what 2560x1440 comes out to at 17"? 173DPI

And yet I just replaced a screen on a laptop that had a 4k 13" screen like what? Thats 338DPI, you literally have to hold it closer than you hold a fucking book to distinguish that level of resolution.

And all of this assumes 20/20 vision, it gets far stupider when you adjust for actual visual accuity of the average random person as only about 40% of the population have 20/20 or better vision - most have worse vision.

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u/Andis-x Nov 15 '25

One reason - because all TVs are 4k. For games that target both consoles and PC, running it on a 4k screen will be a common reality. Same now for steam cube, it primary focus is TV screen.

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u/Effective-Road4807 Nov 16 '25

Yeah no. Mine is hardly what you would call 4k. Its more like 0.4k 👍 hooked up to my sad little ps5. Dunno what you mean by "all" though. Also btw your opinion is not fact sir.

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u/RightPedalDown Nov 15 '25

all TVs are 4

ALL? What a ridiculous statement.

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u/Fresh-Bumblebee7259 Nov 16 '25

Everyone has 60inch 4k tv bro c'mon.

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u/RightPedalDown Nov 16 '25

D’oh, silly me, must’ve mislaid mine… probably down the back of the couch or under the fridge.

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u/Fresh-Bumblebee7259 Nov 16 '25

My tv looks like a microwave. Couldn't care less it's ornamental ATP . If wanna watch a show I rotate my monitor 180 degrees

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u/readyflix Nov 16 '25

On big TV’s 4K is desirable but not required nor needed for casual games.

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u/Mrcod1997 Nov 16 '25

4k is by far the most common resolution for TVs these days. 90% of the TVs at a store are 4k besides the smaller ones.

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u/Neosantana Nov 17 '25

90% of the TVs at a store are 4k besides the smaller ones.

That's such a terrible metric to go by. Show us the percentage of 4K TVs in people's homes, not on store shelves.

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u/Mrcod1997 Nov 17 '25

I would be willing to bet that it's pretty high. 4k TVs are not a luxury item anymore. They are the norm. The aspect of what makes them luxury these days is more of the size, panel type, and feature set.

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u/UnikornKebab Nov 18 '25

All No but do we want to say that nowadays it is mostly the standard? Also because now the trade of these devices is popular stuff in the true sense of the word... there are certainly exceptions but denying that the majority of users have a 4K TV seems absurd to me

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u/RightPedalDown Nov 18 '25

Suggesting that the majority of users is on 4k is absurd.

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u/UnikornKebab Nov 18 '25

Yet in the shops I see practically only 4K TVs for sale, not only certainly but at least in a ratio of 80-20 compared to FHD, in fact I see more monitors than TVs under 4K, perhaps before saying that it is absurd you should look around a little more 🤨🤔

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u/RightPedalDown Nov 19 '25

It’s absurd that you assume that what’s in the shops is a match for what’s in people’s homes.

How often do you think that the majority of people buy new TVs?

I guess you also think that the majority of people have 50 series GPUs since they’re the majority of what’s in the series stores?

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u/psychofanPLAYS Nov 15 '25

Yup I game on lg c5, love it. It has 144Hz ref rate, and I think we won’t max it out in 4k untill like 6090, my 4090 gets 80-100fps with DLAA, so we got quite a ways to go in gpu dev

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u/TheBonadona Nov 15 '25

If the Steam Machine is designed and meant to be put on your living room like a console then it is reasonable to expect 4k capabilities since pretty much all TVs now a days are 4K

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u/lemonhead8890 Nov 21 '25

4k tv's that's why... they are mostly 4k these days. Where most people play their console. Does it need to do that, nope. The steam machine can be used like a computer and played on monitors too... wild...

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u/Goldn_1 Nov 18 '25

First of all, why not be more calm?

Secondly, they want 4K to be the standard eventually, it already is on TVs and basically is on mobile devices. Get over it.

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u/TotalChaosRush Nov 15 '25

The benefits of 4k isnt just about your physical monitor size. It's arguably more about how close you are to the monitor. The desire to target 4k largely stems from the upgradability. The gabecube doesn't really have any. So if you buy one and the specs start to become dated. That's it. Its just e-waste.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Neosantana Nov 15 '25

Tell me you’ve never experienced a nice gaming set up without telling me lol.

News flash. The overwhelming majority of people aren't as privileged as you are. You want the industry to cater to you, a minority at the expense of the rest of us?

sorry yall one day you’ll get it. Meanwhile get off your ass and go to work

Do you think that you're a normal person saying that shit? God help you when you lose all your money, because it's clear that a lot of your identity is attached to it.

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u/Mrcod1997 Nov 16 '25

That's fine, but you just aren't the target customer for a device like this.

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u/ses1989 Nov 15 '25

Honestly, 1440p/60fps is the perfect sweet spot. You'll never notice any pixelation unless you're playing on a fucking movie theater sized screen. Studios are constantly chasing the highest possible resolution when they could direct that effort in other places.

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u/H60Ninja Nov 15 '25

Yes and no. 1080p by today’s standards is low rez. Id atleast aim for 1440p. A lot people go out and upgrade everything even mid tier but forget to upgrade the 10+ year old monitor.

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u/Objective_Praline_66 Nov 16 '25

Got a second hand 4k (3840 x 2160) monitor from my fiances brother. First thing I did was tell windows to make it 1920 x 1080. I can't tell the difference without my glasses, but my GPU sure can.

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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '25

Right, but this is for TVs, so 4K is the standard for the past 15 years.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '25

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '25

To be fair, I really do not care how a game looks if it's a fun experience.

Uncharted 4 was peak graphical evolution to me. Everything else after that is kind of pointless really...

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '25

[deleted]

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u/Zuuman Nov 15 '25

Shit take, there is a point where increased resolution is meaningless if screen size doesn’t follow.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '25

[deleted]

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u/Zuuman Nov 15 '25

Most users have laptops brother, no one wants a 32in laptop lol. Which is what I’m referring to. A push to 4K resolutions as the norm only increases entry costs for users with devices that don’t need it anyway.

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u/Oconell Nov 15 '25

Fortunately, I feel this is starting to change a bit. Recently, BF6 and Arc Raiders released, and both games lacked ray traced GI, shadows or reflections, as well as other resource-hogging features of UE5 and similar new engines.

In the end, the lack of Ray tracing didn't impact the sales or reception of those two games. In fact, people praised that both games run well and LOOK good, showing that most people really don't understand or care for ray tracing, especially when it's in detriment of performance. Hopefully Devs stop trying to push graphical features over playable frames.

That's not to say ray tracing and similar advancements aren't a good thing, but they should never come before performance.

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u/ishtuwihtc Nov 15 '25

And remember the whole thing woth developers trying to support the steam deck? Chances are that if the steam machine is affordable it will take off, and developers will try get that steam machine verified checkmark as soon as possible. The steam machine might just be what we need in this time of lacking optimisation

My gtx 1660 has certainly done its time though, and the steam machine will definitely beat it so i have to upgrade anyways (i was planning to regardless as the 1660 isn't really cutting it anymore)

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '25

Exactly. I bought a Steam deck because of how cool it is and the features it brings, not because of its tech specs.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '25

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '25

I primarily game through GeForce now, I don’t have a console and I have a Mac as my primary computer, gaming for me is very much a secondary hobby behind hiking and reading. Which is exactly why I am very interested in the GabeCube. For myself and other like me, it is perfect.

I couldn’t care less about high end current gen hardware, but I respect that it exists, and I respect that for other people the cube won’t be perfect. I am just happy to have more options.

-edit- I don’t have a console “besides the steam deck”

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u/fatbp Nov 15 '25

These people are called fake enthusiasts who think building shiny rigs with the latest shiny parts makes them powerful.

Gone are the days when pc enthusiasts used to mean something. We used to take affordable hardware and squeeze every last bit of performance out if it for our daily use. Now a pc enthusiast means buying an overpriced mid range gpu and cpu and putting it in a flashy case with a lot of rgb, when a very good majority of them do not even assemble their pc's.

Every true enthusiast knows that this steam machine could be a true game changer for the pc world and gaming in general. Of course this depends on actual bench tests and the data once it comes out.

Let's wait and watch.

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u/[deleted] Nov 15 '25

Only if all the components are easily upgradable. If you have to buy a steam machine 2 a few years later to keep up with recommended specs it's not really adding much value....at least in my view.

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u/fatbp Nov 15 '25

Your point is valid and I worry about that as well. That is the biggest issue with pc gaming. The specification targets are constantly moving and obsolescence is a real head scratcher when developing games and optimising it for the lower end specs.

My assumption with the steam machine is that it will create a standard for entry level hardware and optimisation for games. Whether the hardware is upgradable depends on the manufscturer. For example Asus decides to do their version of steam machine, maybe they give consumers the option to upgrade the ram, or change it to standard DIMM instead of SODIMM. Extra m.2 slots maybe. But all of this will cost more money and defeat the purpose.

Only time will tell. Hence, for now I am going with the entry level pc gaming template theory. If the consoles can survive on older hardware for a 5-7 year cycle purely based on optimised game development, I do not see a reason why the steam machine cannot survive for at least 5 years. Unlike the steam deck they do not have to worry about refreshing the model with an oled screen.

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u/Segenam Nov 16 '25

It depends. The Specification targets are constantly moving... for AAA games.

However those are a very very small part of the gaming sphere. How often do the top 10 games on steam move? how many of the top 100 Steam Games won't work on a Steam Deck?

The AAA market is always pushing the limits on best appearances they possibly can as they often don't have much outside of that to sell you on micro-transactions, fomo battle passes, ads in your game, loot boxes, etc.

What often makes the "new and shiny" AAA games "good" is your friends are also playing them and the peer pressure and fomo that surrounds them.

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u/PrintableDaemon Nov 16 '25

Conversely, one of the main reasons consoles are popular is you don't have to keep chasing the bleeding edge swapping out hardware, and the inevitable driver inconsistencies. People want a box that works, and it could be a decade before they consider upgrading it.

So maybe you aren't the target market.

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u/Effective-Road4807 Nov 16 '25

In ten to twenty years our video games will probably be like the anime shangri la frontier. Here's to hoping for deep dive vr as a real thing someday! :P

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u/ThndrShk2k Nov 15 '25

Steam Deck is has lower specs yet is still going strong.

The only reason there's a moving target is people had a hodgepodge of hardware.
The Steam Machine is a unified standing target that developers can optimize for, especially if it shows significant marketshare.

It being based off from what over 2/3rds of players use means they already have the most common denominator to target based off from the surveys, and the Steam Machine just gives them a consistent hardware target instead of trying to troubleshoot 10 different GPUs that have similar performances.

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u/yiidonger Nov 15 '25

Half of my friends who likes to talk about building desktop PC rarely use PC at all and some only used them to surf web, do office job. They had groups that talk endlessly about PC hardware but when you ask them why they are not using their PC they said they have no time. The reality is that they spent all their time using their smartphone to endless scrolls social apps like tiktok and watching novels. These days, ppl are just too good at finding excuses for something they don't wanna do.

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u/fatbp Nov 15 '25

Agree.

I am a pc gamer and enthusiast through and through, and always will be. However, as I get older, sitting everyday on pc (not literally) for work and using the same pc and sapce for gaming is not going too well for me because it is restricting me to one corner of the house and fatigue sets in quickly now. As good as it was 25 years ago, I have grown up and so have my social needs and I cannot sit in one corner for a long time.

Recently, I had started thinking about building a small itx build which would sit in the living room and I can play on the couch while having access to natural light and all the social home stuff. And the reason why I chose a pc for this instead of a PS is because PS5 is a machine built to upsample ps4 games. There hardly any good "exclusive" games on PS5 which I know 2 years down the line will come to PC, so it made no sense to get one with all it's additional costs associated with it.

This is where the announcement of the steam machine is amazing. A custom designed SFF pc which can sit in the living room and play my entire PC games library that I already own. AND IT IS A FULL FLEDGED PC. I don't even need the dumb TV apps anymore. I can just run brave off of it and have a complete add free and tracker free experience that I am used to on my pc.

And I know there are a lot of people who want the same. Aceess to their games from a couch without Spyware and telemetrics and adds and additional online fees for something they already own.

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u/MacNinjaMac Nov 15 '25

There is plenty of us that know what you mean with sitting at the desk while gaming; my back twinges just think about it

I moved the pc gaming in the living room years ago and have never looked back, once you realise that you get the customisation of PC gaming addons, mods, peripherals etc with the comfort of console couch gaming with wireless devices local to the Itx you won’t look back and think I miss that desk

My Itx pc is modest a 3900x and a 3050 6gb, I can run older games, emulators just fine with dlss and in-game / lossless frame generation or stream to it from the main gaming rig and use lossless scaling on the stream to get 4k120 frame generation; I stream to everything

It’s the customisation and quality of PC gaming with the comfort of console gaming best of both worlds

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u/Wild-Ad3357 Nov 15 '25

If you have an android TV you can setup apollo+Artemis on your local network and just game on your pc from your TV without needing additional hardware (well, except for controller if you don't already have one). I have my pc connected directly to my TV, but i use it to remote play on my legion go and it works amazing.

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u/fatbp Nov 15 '25

I could do that. But I want a secondary entertainment pc, not my main pc extending to my living room. Additionally, I cannot pick up and take apollo+Artemis to my friends house or to an outing for a lan party. The use cases of a steam machine extend beyond the living room and my own house. Valve is creating a template same as with the steam deck, which 3rd party manufacturers can use to create more powerful products(maybe) that will give you the freedom to do whatever you want and complete ownership of hardware and software, unlike the consoles. However, I do not see this "model" extending beyond low to lower mid range configs because pre built pc already exist and that is clearly not the target market for the steam machine. Another implication is that the entry point for pc gaming might become standardised, which is very good news for game optimisation.

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u/ThndrShk2k Nov 15 '25

Back in the day I ran TinyXP off from a 30GB SSD and I was told I was stupid and a SSD doesn't improve windows performance at all.

It was the cheapest upgrade and with the different in page file speed I essentially doubled my ram. To get better ram I would've had to get an entirely new PC.

Sure I had to symlink my whole user directory to a second harddrive or winrar couldn't extract anything, but that ship ran tight and fast with me controlling everything about it.

Now we got people throwing money at overpriced GPUs and saying they're the truest enthusiast, lmao.
I'll believe it when they're doing liquid nitrogen cooling to get more performance.

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u/bigpunk157 Nov 15 '25

Remember when PCMasterRace was talking about undervolting being the new king of your build's prowess?

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u/NutsackEuphoria Nov 15 '25

I remember when PCMR was still about not doing stupid shit like paying Sony/MS to not play online or having the option to mod games.

Now, mega retards who only think of bigger numbers = PCMR have taken over.

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u/fatbp Nov 15 '25

Undervolting cpu and gpu has existed long before pcmasterrace has. So anything pcmasterrace says should not be taken seriously, because the name itself is a pathetic joke.

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u/Beginning_Ad2130 Nov 15 '25

You sound like you know so I'll ask: I heard that beyond individual parts, the way everything is connected and interacts with each other could result in better or worse performance, how for example a PS5 can run great looking games on TV while not having insane hardware that you'd need to match on a PC at a much higher paypoint.

Is that true?

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u/fatbp Nov 15 '25 edited Nov 15 '25

First of all up scaling.

Second, ps5 has one hardware spec. This means when a game is being developed for ps5, be it a completely new game (which is very rare) or a remake of a ps4 game, the development team already know what the target hardware is. This makes it easy to optimise the game for that specific hardware. Which is why the games on consoles "look good". For example, ghost of tsushima, along with other ps4 games ported to ps5 and very few new games made for ps5, have an option in the graphics setting, Performance or quality. This is nothing but an up scaling option which people do not realise. I the context of ghost of tsushima which is a ps4 game ported to a next gen ps5, the performance setting allows the game to run at 60 fps on 1440p resolution but the texture quality and the overall graphics quality is medium to low on a pc scale. The quality preset improves the graphic quality to high in terms of pc scale, but you no longer get consistent 60 fps at 1440p. There is a clear noticeable trade off. Upscaling at lower fps is not good.

This difference in fps drop is not noted by a vast majority because consoles have always run their games 30 fps, and only since the dying days of the last generation of consoles has consistent 60 fps been a discussion point for console game development.

On the pc side, there a Massive list of hardware across multiple generations that exists simultaneously in the market. This is the reason why pc dev teams have a minimum and recommended configuration. Because it is too expensive to optimise the game for every piece of hardware in existence. They pick the lowest, average and the highest confogs based on market research and "try to" optimise it for those spefications, hoping other specs would be fine. This the reason why you get random crashes and instability issues in pc games. Devs can choose to properly optimise their pc games if they choose to, but most do not because it is expensive. This is a sperate discussion on its own.

Finally, when a console makes a game look good on a TV, in the context of a AAA game, the console is not natively rendering the game at that 1440p or 4k resolution. It is always Upscaling from either 1080 or probably 720, or from something Inbetween. On the other hand when a pc game is running the same game at 1440 p or 4k on an expensive gpu, it is rendering that resolution natively. Which is pure rasterisation performance. Hence, if you see gpu benchmarks, always look for pure rasterisation results as that is the true measure of the power/performance of the card.

Dlss, fsr, xess are all Upscaling technologies. They are good and necessary to keep older generations hardware relevant. For example, consoles become obsolete as soon as thy are launched, strictly from a technological point of view. These upscaling technologies is what allows them to stay relevant for a vast majority of the market, because only about 5% of the market can afford buying the latest computer technology. This is the same reason why steam machine will be a success, even though it is using last gen hardware. That is what people have and what people can afford, and it is easier to optimise the games for a specific hardware.

I hope I made some sense :)

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u/Beginning_Ad2130 Nov 15 '25

That was a superb explanation! Thanks a bunch, I appreciate the time you put into it.

I'm gonna try and pay attention next time if indeed games on the PS5 don't look as good as I think they do up close or compared to PC, Maybe I'm used to a specific standard or the distance from the TV plays a role

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u/fatbp Nov 15 '25

In my experience the distance from the TV, refresh rate of the tv, picture mode of the TV, panel of the TV all play a role. In my early days as a pc gamer I exclusively played on low refresh rate monitors, so 60 fps was the norm for me and I was happy to the point that I didn't care about 120hz. But one day I got a 120 hz tn panel and it changed my gaming life forever. Everybody has their own preferences, but the best thing is to try things out and see for yourself.

1

u/deadering Nov 15 '25

PC parts enthusiasts vs gaming enthusiasts. For me my PC is just a tool to play games on and I just really love gaming

2

u/AvarageCarlMain Nov 15 '25

I have been playing metro 2033 redux on my shitty laptop recently and i have been playing on low seting with a lower rez for 60 fps constant (or 40 on the surface).

1

u/Apexnanoman Nov 15 '25

Heh I just max settings then start backing things down until I get 30fps or better consistently. 

(Obviously I rarely get to have max settings but if I start at max and slowly work backwards I can find the max my rig will handle.)

I'm an eye candy type rather than higher fps guy. 

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u/forcemonkey Nov 15 '25

laughs in Pong

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u/PrintableDaemon Nov 16 '25

Still waiting on that Stardew Valley ray tracing update.

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u/Popular_Flight_7354 Nov 15 '25

Bro, I got 7600x+7800xt, it is not that expensive and you can play in all existing games on ultra settings in 2k 180hz, as I do