The Handheld Steam Machine With Linux & AMD SoC Moves Ahead

[profoundWHALE]

As someone here said 720p would have been just fine.

It will be 720p unless the stretch goal is met. If this thing was advertised on Steam though...

[Mama Luigi]

Intel SoC's have terrible graphics - So you're now stuck with AMD SoC's

According to PassMark (which may or may not be accurate for this situation), Cherry Trail Atoms actually have a bit better graphics performance than the current R-series APUs, when it is taken into consideration that these things have to be passively cooled. Also, there could be a potential performance hit with Catalyst that is not in Intel's open source drivers, and these comparisons were made on Windows. Given the time to ship, however, and it appears that they could be using semi-custom chips with possibly something like a dual core processor and 4 GCN cores with a lower TDP or something of that type.

[Mama Luigi]

The only mistake they made was going for Jaguar cores. They should've done for Carrizo, since that would've been much faster and more power efficient.

Yes. If they had opted for something like an RX-216GD with a lowered cTDP or even an RX-418GD in the "Pro" model. It would be significantly faster than any Jaguar-based solution that they could get with their constraints.

I also think that doing a 720p screen would've been a safer option for both affordability and performance. At 1080p, that's 440PPI, which to me is overkill.

For a low power APU, 1080p wouldn't be usable for gaming. You'd have to lower the resolution to get decent performance levels. I honestly don't care about the resolution as long as it's larger than 1024x600 and the display quality is good.

[Revan]

I doubt the performance will be okay for any modern game at 1080p.

Judging by the list of embedded processors in the G-series they will most likely choose the dual-core 9W or the 6W version considering the thermal constraints within such a small device. I haven't managed to find any benchmarks on the 9W skew, but NotebookCheck says that the 6W SKU has the same performance as the A4-1200. Judging by the benchmarks they made it's graphic performance in any 3dmark benchmark with or without physics the processor if behind any Intel Bay Trail sold today in the same thermal envelope (for example the N2805) and that's horrible in graphic performance. I don't know what these people where thinking when they said "it can play any modern game" but this thing will be dead on arrival because it will be able to play only some 2D indie games (like Fez, which they show running) and that's it. All of the other games where streamed over Wi-Fi if you ask me.

[Ardje]

Ok, I will do some prediction from past experiences: it will not launch next oktober. Don't get me wrong, I might throw money at it, but it will not be finished in time. You have to have a lot of experience to get this thing in commercial prototype phase at that date.
Since it is supposed to be a gaming rig, I hope they will acknowledge that, and make sure they can easily upgrade APU's before production really starts.
I am an openpandora and ouya veteran. Actually, the ouya was pretty on time.
Oh wait, I am also still waiting on D:OS, but at least that hasn't been delayed as long as the openpandora.

[Hamsterkill]

SteamOS and games for it are only available as x86 binaries - So you're stuck with Intel and AMD

I'm not sure that's true for SteamOS, anymore. Isn't the Steam Link ARM-based? So Steam and SteamOS must at least be capable of running on ARM. The games obviously still need x86, though.

[HenryM]

Ok, I will do some prediction from past experiences: it will not launch next oktober. Don't get me wrong, I might throw money at it, but it will not be finished in time. You have to have a lot of experience to get this thing in commercial prototype phase at that date.

probably. many crowd-funded projects massively underestimate the time and money required to finish and distribute a software or hardware thing. and the PR stuff is a job in itself.

still, it looks pretty far along already. it looks like a neat concept! and compared to a mid-to-high-end phone, it's not that expensive.

[Kano]

Looks like standard hardware that could run any OS. Basically if you use the Steam streaming feature all you need is hardware accellerated H264, that should be possible. I don't know if it would be fun to play directly on the gfx chip. For streaming only maybe a Shield tablet K1 combined with the gamepad is today a better alternative as you could buy games as a service if your Internet connection is fast. Steam streaming from a Linux host seems to be a bit buggy - does that work fine for somebody?

[L_A_G]

I'm not sure that's true for SteamOS, anymore. Isn't the Steam Link ARM-based? So Steam and SteamOS must at least be capable of running on ARM. The games obviously still need x86, though.

The Steam Link is not really a proper SteamOS device, it's basically just an in-home streaming box that you use to stream gameplay from your Windows, Mac or Linux box. However even if Valve starts providing ARM builds of proper SteamOS that can actually run games locally, there aren't any Steam games with ARM binaries out there.

....

PassMark is not a GPU bench, it's mostly a CPU benchmark and I wasn't able to find any GPU tests for cherry trail chips in the PassMark listings (according to ark.intel they don't use one of the common graphics). AMD has vastly superior GPU's and Intel's Linux driver's aren't anything stellar ether, so if AMD can get their Linux drivers sorted out at least somewhat an embedded R-series would stomp on Intel's offerings from a GPU performance standpoint. If AMD can get some 14nm parts out by then (which isn't so far out there remembering that they're already supplying Apple with 14nm chips) I wouldn't be the least surprised if AMD was able to do a really good job at providing them a high performance and low power part.

[juno]

What GPU does this SoC contain, is it even GCN so it will be supported by amdgpu? And how 'big' is it (in CUs)? How should this Jaguar SoC be able to provide a smooth experience in 1920*1080 w/ this ultra low end graphics and single channel DDR3?