Valve’s decision to support SteamOS 3.8 on standard gaming PCs has opened the door to a new class of Steam Machines. Gamers no longer need Valve’s own hardware to get the living-room Linux console thing going.
A new benchmark from YouTuber ETA Prime suggests a high-end AMD-powered mini PC can comfortably beat Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine. The catch is that it costs several times more.
According to Digital Trends, the tests show AMD’s latest integrated graphics are becoming rather tasty, provided the buyer has not already sold a kidney to buy one.
SteamOS 3.8 makes Valve’s Linux-based gaming system available for compatible desktop PCs, particularly AMD-powered kit. Nvidia support is still maturing, but SteamOS now lets users build a console-like PC without waiting for Valve’s blessing.
ETA Prime showed this by installing SteamOS 3.8.14 on a mini PC powered by AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor. The chip has 16 Zen 5 cores, 32 threads and an integrated Radeon 8060S GPU with 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units.
That is far beefier than the semi-custom AMD processor inside Valve’s Steam Machine. Valve’s box reportedly uses a six-core Zen 4 CPU and an RDNA 3 GPU with 28 compute units.
To squeeze out graphics performance, ETA Prime allocated 96GB of shared memory as VRAM. That left 31GB of system memory, which is still plenty for most games.
The gains showed up across several titles using native rendering without upscaling. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the Ryzen-powered system averaged 138 FPS at 1080p against 118 FPS on the Steam Machine.
At 1440p, the mini PC hit 103 FPS against 86 FPS. At 4K, it managed 62 FPS, beating Valve’s hardware by 41 per cent.
Cyberpunk 2077 told much the same story. The AMD box averaged 84 FPS at 1080p, 52 FPS at 1440p and 27 FPS at 4K.
Valve’s Steam Machine managed 74 FPS, 45 FPS and 18 FPS in the same tests. That makes the mini PC quicker, although 4K without upscaling is still a bit of a mug’s game.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered kept the pattern going. The AMD system delivered 72 FPS at 1080p, 56 FPS at 1440p and 32 FPS at 4K.
That left Valve’s hardware trailing again. It is a tidy win for the Radeon 8060S, though not exactly a cheap one. The setup used in ETA Prime’s test costs about $3,999. Valve’s Steam Machine is expected to start at $1,049.
Paying nearly $3,000 more for frame-rate gains of 15 to 50 per cent will be a hard sell. It is even harder when Valve’s box is supposed to be the simple console-style option.
There is a less daft alternative. Systems such as the GMKtec EVO-X2 AI Mini PC use the same Ryzen AI Max+ 395 and sell for about $1,999.
That version has 64GB of LPDDR5X memory, so users cannot allocate the same silly 96GB of VRAM used in ETA Prime’s test. In gaming, that probably will not matter much.
Even today’s most powerful consumer graphics cards rarely need more than 32GB of VRAM. Pouring more memory into the graphics pool mostly gives benchmark obsessives something to stroke.
The bigger story is SteamOS 3.8. Valve is no longer asking gamers to buy a Steam Machine, just compatible hardware and enough patience for Linux gaming quirks.
As SteamOS matures and hardware support expands, especially for Nvidia GPUs, gamers should get more choice in building console-like PCs. Whether they should spend four grand doing it is another matter entirely.
