Valve To Begin Steam Box Tests In Coming Months

[iniudan]

They are making 32 bit Linux client like they do for all other OS...the client is always 32 bit....as for OS, because vast majority of PC gamers are using discrete GPUs, 4GB of mian RAM do just fine when we use a discrete GPU with it's own memory.

The 64bit OS is almost a mandatory thing if they go APU instead of discrete GPU...and there will not real problems to use the 32bit client+games in a 64bit OS...at least not nowdays.

As for 8GB vs 4GB RAM costs that means, in Euros, IIRC, around 30? (this was for 2133MHz RAM)....in USA will be probably only 30$....and those are retail prices, last time i bought RAM (end of last year) that was the difference and for 2133Mhz RAM...such a price difference will be hardly a show stopper.

Memory limit of 32 bit OS is not just the RAM, it all system addressed memory, so discrete card would also count toward that limit.

[AJSB]

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

They are making 32 bit Linux client like they do for all other OS...the client is always 32 bit....as for OS, because vast majority of PC gamers are using discrete GPUs, 4GB of mian RAM do just fine when we use a discrete GPU with it's own memory.

The 64bit OS is almost a mandatory thing if they go APU instead of discrete GPU...and there will not real problems to use the 32bit client+games in a 64bit OS...at least not nowdays.

As for 8GB vs 4GB RAM costs that means, in Euros, IIRC, around 30? (this was for 2133MHz RAM)....in USA will be probably only 30$....and those are retail prices, last time i bought RAM (end of last year) that was the difference and for 2133Mhz RAM...such a price difference will be hardly a show stopper.

[boast]

How so quickly when TF2 still runs better on Wine than native for me?

[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.

[GreatEmerald]

As for 2 or 4 GB (and not Gb)

Neither. RAM is counted in GiB (gibibytes).

[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.

[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

[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.

[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).

[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.