Valve To Begin Steam Box Tests In Coming Months

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve To Begin Steam Box Tests In Coming Months

It looks like Valve is planning to begin Steam Box testing with gamers this summer...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTMxOTM

[sabun]

Shipping

I wonder how they'll handle shipping overseas. Since I don't live in the U.S.A or the U.K, but in Malaysia, how will I purchase one?

Valve doesn't exactly have brick-and-mortar stores. Any idea who might be selling them overseas?

[AJSB]

I bet that will use an AMD APU....the signs of it are noise and heat

Actually that is true for a A10-5800K....another MoBo that i have with a AMD E-350 is extremely cool and silent....but of course that kind of hardware won't be used....i bet AMD APU, possibly A10-5800K....and 8GB RAM.

[grigi]

I don't think 8gb ram. Steam for Linux is targeting 32-bit. So initial version will probably ship with 2 or 4Gb of ram.

[Mr.Skullbeef]

I don't think 8gb ram. Steam for Linux is targeting 32-bit. So initial version will probably ship with 2 or 4Gb of ram.

That's just the Steam client itself, and it's the same on all platforms.

I'd bet it uses similar hardware to PS4 (AMD 8-core APU w/ gcn).

[AJSB]

I don't think 8gb ram. Steam for Linux is targeting 32-bit. So initial version will probably ship with 2 or 4Gb of ram.

The Steam client is 32bit....the underlying OS should be 64bit for several reasons....for starters when we have shared memory between CPU and GPU is better to have a 64bit OS because of memory segmentation...at least , my experiments showed a increase of performance (read: frame rate) when using a 64bit OS with APUs.

As for 2 or 4 GB (and not Gb) of RAM instead of 8, i pretty much doubt that will be 2 or even only 4GB.... recommended specs for Serious Sam 3 is precisely 4GB....that will put SB in the edge of specs.

Let's not also forget that we are talking about APUs that share memory with the buildin GPU....if you put away 1GB RAM for video, the 8GB will turn out to be only 7GB....if it was 4GB it would end up to be have only 3GB of RAM for everything besides video.
That's BELLOW recommended specs for many current AAA titles.

....and if more really big AAA game titles/franchises start to be ported to Linux, many recommend ALREADY 8GB of RAM....and if Valve doesn't want to look bad and/or have their SB look old very very fast, it must have 8GB RAM....

Any Next Gen console must have a minimum of 8GB RAM.

[grigi]

They do seem to do all their development against 32-bit Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

It also depends on how often they plan to update the hardware, and their targeted cost.
Since they have to cater for custom built machines, my guess is they would probably release an update far more often than the other console makers, so you don't have to start super-high-end.

Either way, I don't think they don't _need_ 8Gib right now, so they may try to save costs.

As for an AMD apu, are they into using a custom processor or are they going to choose an existing off-the-shelf one? I don't have enough info.
I wonder how good the new Kaveri processor is? It is coming out soon, apparently, and supports GDDR5. That could be quite cool, as I have a Lano based system, and its GPU is very clearly bandwidth starved.

:P Speculation :P

[grigi]

AJSB, valid points regarding the unified memory for GPUs. They may go discrete GPU. This is all speculation, and we will probably have an idea of what they are targeting in 4 or so months if the rumours are true.

[GreatEmerald]

As for 2 or 4 GB (and not Gb)

Neither. RAM is counted in GiB (gibibytes).

[AJSB]

AJSB, valid points regarding the unified memory for GPUs. They may go discrete GPU. This is all speculation, and we will probably have an idea of what they are targeting in 4 or so months if the rumours are true.

Yeah, they can go discrete, in special because both AMD and NVIDIA have good solutions for that but an APU will possibly will cut costs and of course, machine size.

However, the fact that Gabe said that they are having some noise and heat issues makes me bet on a AMD APU...possibly they are testing with an out-of-shelf AMD APU like the A10-5800K that uses a very noisy (by my standards ) fan (kinda...fighter jet taking off...LOL, i'm exaggerating )

...but of course , this is all pure speculation...at most by summer we will know.